Binki
Songster
This led to some foot injuries in my quail because I had a shelf they would jump up and down from a zillion times a day, landing on the prickly hay.
I changed to shavings but my one quail hen, Robbie, seemed to have a wound on the bottom of their foot that would get inflamed so I removed the shelf and this seemed to fix it. This was over 6 months ago.
Several days ago she developed a limp that has gotten worse, we were putting in an order for some medicated dip (Tricide Neo) that's supposed to be for koi ulcers but people use it on chicken bumblefoot with success without surgery, so I thought it was the best thing to try first at least.
I was alarmed today because although she is limping around eating and drinking, she's literally folding some toes under her foot sometimes when she walks - looks like she can't feel/control her toes
!!??So I looked closer and noticed some dirty and possibly raised scales on her feet but it was when my friend held her up that I got the angle to see that some scales have a millimeter or two between them :/ The bottoms of her feet were clean (no wounds) so I was like "SCALEY LEGS MITES
".So I soaked her legs in Epsom salt warm water for a few minutes with the help of my friend and then we tried to dry her off with paper towel and rubbed copious amounts of Vaseline all up and around her leg scales :/
I didn't use a brush to brush at her scales because I plan to repeat this as long and as often as necessary and she was already so stressed and it looked like that would lame her further :/ I'll see how improved she is tonight and tomorrow.
So just wanted to share with you guys in case you see raised/dirty scales in your quail or they're appearing lame for no obvious reason, could be scaley leg mites... And this quail was hatched by me last year and we have never had a problem with these mites before even having chickens out all day or with any other quail.
She's never even been outdoors - she was in the garage next to an open window last year then since last winter has been indoors so not exactly sure where she picked it up!! I have given them some sod before so they could play in the grass but that was a long time ago, several months.
I've attached a picture of what early infestations look like in a chicken from another poster because you pretty much always see advanced stages - I totally checked her legs last week! Ugh I shouldn't have assumed the problem was under the foot and studied the top better :/
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