My goodness, @duckies1230 , I'm so sorry to hear you're going through this. I'm kind of behind on BYC right now. Are things any better?
You've gotten great advice here, and I just wanted to add that, like others here, I am not a proponent of giving oral or injected antibiotics unless they're necessary. You never want to give them "just in case it might help." I grew up in an era where doctors would give a "just in case" antibiotic if you came into the office sneezing. We're paying the price for that now because many strains have become resistant to some of the "best" antibiotics.
Infections in the feet of ducks are most often cause by staph, and the drug of choice for that depending on the strain is still something in the penicillin class as far as I know. You don't know exactly what it is unless you have it cultured, which means a vet visit. A culture shows you what classes of drugs and what drugs within that class will be effective for your particular thing. That's why you can't just say, "Okay, this is something in the penicillin class, so it will work." You might be doing more harm than good if you're using something not effective for that particular infection but that would be for something in the future.
@casportpony
Kathy, would it be okay with you if I add some things to your thread to give people at least a basic idea how to tell what the class of various drugs is, like if you look at the generic name of a drug ends in "cillin," it's in the penicillin class? You can add that to the posts you're doing, but I'm thinking it would be helpful to have that kind of thing in one post that just shows how to at least identify the class of drug you're using.
