Is this bumble foot?

[speckledhen]

What would hemmorhoid ointment/cream do, though, Diana? Any ideas on if it would help anything? I'm sure it won't help with infection, right?
My problem was that there was no discernible swelling in the feet until the infection has taken hold pretty well, so I never got an indication of it unless I upended all 26 birds every couple days to check their feet for a black scab, pretty time consuming. I have removed a black scab which had a cheesy plug attached and the foot was not swollen at all, still pliable and soft.

 

[dlhunicorn]

I too have seen it mentioned... here for example:
http://www.wildlifeinformation.org/Subdirectories_for_Search2/SampleDiseases/Bumblefoot.htm

Now the above reference covers several different aspects and does indeed say "with special emphasis on waterfowl" however bumblefoot basics are in general the same (treatment may vary I suppose)...
"Bumblefoot" is a kind of "catch-all" phrase and as you see in that reference link that Pododermititis i.e. "Bumblefoot" is often multifactoral and can also be linked to other conditions such as osteomyelitis and tenosynovitis (as to what the pathogenesis implications to those complications are, I am unsure)...
I do not have an immediate answer as to why so many of your birds are having trouble with this ... I suspect it may be due to several things ...

To answer your question , I presume it's the phenylephrine content of Prep H. This is a vasoconstrictor, to help shrink the swelling. see here:
http://fdb.rxlist.com/drugs/drug-75....aspx?drugid=75699&drugname=preparation+h+top

However this would only be effective on those forms of swelling/"bumblefoot"when an abscess is not present and no it will not treat any bacterial infection present as far as I am aware.

 

[speckledhen]

I have fought this for over a year with many of my original flock and one or two of my younger ones have gotten it, so the original cause does not apply to those. The nonskid tape was removed long before I got my mid-aged girls hatched. All roosts have been sanded, re sanded, sanded and sanded and sanded and oiled, etc. My floors are clean and dry and covered with vinyl. Unless there is some relation to the DE I used for a long time, the cause cannot be inside the coops. I quit using DE on the floors a month ago after someone linked it to bumblefoot in their coop, just to see if it would help. I have a freerange flock and multiple old burn piles from the previous owner that have been cleaned up, but glass perks to the top of the soil all the time. The girls climb on our woodpile, too. I just know it is not a sanitation issue or hazards inside the coop.

 

[dlhunicorn]

From what you are telling me then, it is environmental (glass shards...rocks etc.)...
Perhaps you will simply have to make a "bumblefoot restricted" (hahaha) area for them where any rocks and such (including glass shards in the ground) are removed and not able to reintroduce the pathogen... lot of work but it may be the only answer.

 

[speckledhen]

Just when I think an area is glass/hazard free, we'll have a storm and there'll be a big piece of bottle glass sitting on the ground. I'm not sure it will ever be hazard free around here, unfortunately.

 

[Jabbok]

Ugh, I seem to have many hens with bumblefoot. I think about 5 are limping around and have that black scabby thing on the pad of their foot or feet.

My rooster is limping around, but he has no visible signs of anything, so we don't know what is wrong with him.

We've got a lot of cleaning and prepping for chicken "surgeries." I am not looking forward to this. We'll also need to clean out the coop and lower their roosts and all kinds of stuff. *sigh*

 

[Jabbok]

Quote:
I think my hens are getting it from scratching around the woods surrounding our house. The previous owners had lots of burn piles around and I've cleaned up glass and metal for years and the hens are constantly digging up more.

I'm sure that's what happens with my free-range flock, too.