My chivken got frostbite and now i dont know what to do.

[Alysha1235]

This winter my hen got frostbite pretty bad on her feet. It had got infected and we had this whole mess of antibiotics and her being inside the past month and a half. But now her toes are shriveled up abd black. The flesh is dead. My question is, do i cut them off or anything? Do they fall off by themselves? Any advise would help.

 

[sourland]

In my experience they have always fallen off by themselves.

 

[andreanar]

Aww I'm so sorry. They usually fall off. This was a cold winter here and a few of mine have frostbite damage on their comb tips.

 

[Meg-in-MT]

Is she bleeding? It looks like there is blood in the shavings. I would not cut them off.

 

[Kessel23]

You can prevent further frostbite problems by getting a perch that is 3 inches wide or more. The perch allows your birds to lay their feet out flat, this insures a steady flow of blood to all the toes. Also, when your bird sits down it can cover all of its toes in its feathers and keep them nice and warm through the night. With small and round perches when a bird roosts its toes wrap around the perch, they like being able to wrap their toes around the perch but it makes it so the blood flow is uneven and the dangling toes are not covered by the birds feathers when they sit so they get left out of the birds jacket at night and they freeze off. I don't know what to do about frostbite on the toe because I have never had to deal with it, I provide a thick perch for my birds and they never get toe frostbite. I live in Wisconsin, the winters get pretty bad here but the only frostbite I get is on young roosters crowns.