Need bumble foot help!

[Cheryl]

My rir is just about one year old...one foot is swollen, warm and a bit pink!

 

[Ugly Cowboy]

I think so...

 

[HorseFeathers]

Looks like it. Olympia had it but not that bad... that looks uh-oh...

 

[Cheryl]

So it is very swollen, looking at other threads, it needs to be soaked in epsom salt, will sea salt work? Does it get lanced from the top or the bottom? Some say slather on the neosporin, others say to give her antibiotics, if it's antibiotics, how do I get them? What kind, how much? Do I need to keep her separate? What kind of bandage? If she stays with the other girls will they pick on her bandage? She is not limping yet...

 

[Cheryl]

I will have a people prescription for liquid cephalexin, can anyone tell me how much to shoot down my girl's throat? From Feather Site I got this "Antibiotics should be give for 5 to 7 days before surgery and until the surgical area is healed" Well I will have enough for 3 teaspoons a day for 10 days, and I think this ought to be enough for a chicken? I soaked her foot, picked off the scab, but it is solid underneath...

 

[speckledhen]

The solid underneath is solid pus. A chicken's body encapsulates the infection and solidifies it. You would have to carefully dig it out to remove it. There may be liquid pus underneath that cheesy core.

 

[Cheryl]

Not what I meant, after picking off the scab, the skin is healed over underneath, like when we pick off an almost healed scab and it is white underneath and doesn't bleed! The underside of her foot is squishy. The bumps on top are solid... so back to the dosage...can ANYONE help me?

 

[Cheryl]

so here is all what Feather Site has on info:
Antibiotics should be give for 5 to 7 days before surgery and until the surgical area is healed. Before beginning surgery the entire foot area and lower leg should be throughly washed and cleaned. Disinfect the area with a controlled iodine solution. Do not use pure iodine as it will burn the tissue and make the bird real uncomfortable and will slow the healing process. You can use a numbing agent such as ambesol to partially numb the area before making your incision. Make your incision with a new scalpel and just go slowly and avoid any tendons and blood vessels and slowly make your incision across the affected area making sure that you keep the incision as small as possible. Control bleeding with blood stop powder and by applying finger pressure to the upper part of the leg. Remove all of the hard pus material from the incision and flush it out with saline solution then apply some triple antibiotic ointment directly into the wound and suture or use gauze and adhesive tape to close the wound. It will heal faster and stay cleaner if the bird is not allowed to directly stand on the surgical area. In this case a cast can be made from just about any material that you may have around the house. Be innovative as long as it doesn’t add to the problem. In some cases a halved tennis or racquetball attached to the foot will do the trick. Change the dressing on the foot daily for the first week and then every other day or so as long as the wound is healing well.

 

[Jenski]

What I do know about antibiotics is that you must use the proper kind for the illness, or it really does not do much good. Bumble foot has often been discussed in the forum ~ you might want to do a quick search. I think speckledhen, MissPrissy, dlhunicorn, and sammi have all given good and experienced comments on this in the past, if my aging memory serves me. You might add any of those user IDs to your search function to get to the "meat."

Good luck!

 

[speckledhen]

Sorry, I cant help with a dosage for liquid cephalexin. So the foot is fine under that scab on the footpad? That's rather odd. The swelling between the toes usually means that there is an entry point on the foot pad where the germs got in. When that is cleaned out, usually the swelling will go down. From that picture, it looks like every case of bumblefoot I've treated. It may look white under the scab, but there is infection in there somewhere, probably under a completely solid plug. Most people use Pen-G if they use antibiotics at all so I dont know how to tell you to dose a chicken on ceph for people.