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RC, I'm very glad and also very grateful you took the time to write this, thank you so much ! It's really interesting, and also challenging to my current practices. I am very drawn to that idea that skin can heal itself- it seems so perfect. As usual I wish I hadn't stopped biology and physics in 8th grade so I could understand the why's and how.I suspect my answer is going to get me in hot water, but since you asked......
First remember there are different kinds of wounds. A surgical incision into healthy tissue is different from a puncture from a tooth or a talon for example.
Some wounds are best closed up and some are best left to heal from the bottom. Generally a non-surgical wound can be assumed to be infected and so shouldn't be closed up because that will trap the infection.
In a surgical situation you are trying to prevent bacteria from entering the wound from the surface of the skin. In that situation chlorhexidine has been shown more effective than betadine (I can hunt down a reference for that if needed). And I have never heard any rule about avoiding to use both - and I have never heard of anyone using both!
For anything other than clean surgical wounds the emphasis on wound care has evolved over the last 30 years to focus on encouraging healthy granulation tissue (healing from below) rather than on antiseptic use.
There is at least one study that shows use of ANY antiseptic worse than plain boiled water or sterile normal saline. The study showed faster healing without the use of an antiseptic.
Just like hydrogen peroxide damages the tissues needed to heal, so do the antiseptics.
I think the gold standard for non-surgical wounds is irrigation with boiled water or sterile normal saline followed by coverage with a moist dressing - like a hydrocolloid dressing that encourages the formation of granulation tissue and new skin formation.
Sorry for the long post!
And I do know that health protocols at least in France, can be outdated. I think that my mum, who recently had a pretty ugly wound that required a nurse coming over to tend it for a while, was treated using humid environment with a hydrocolloid dressing and hyaluronic acid to help skin formation. I am quite sure that has not become the usual way of doing, though.
And I will be honest, while I would be fairly confident skipping the antiseptic for myself, I wouldn't really be for the hens, for two reasons. The first is that the level of bacterias and microbes in their environment is much harder to control than for a human being who you can tell to avoid rolling in poop. I have seen with the bumblefeet that the colloid dressing did a really good job of keeping the wound clean. But it was in a place where the hens couldn't peck it off, which I have also seen Piou-piou do very easily when it couldn't be held in place by something else. And on an open wound, I would especially be afraid of flies - at this time of year we have thousands here. The other reason is that many of my chickens aren't as sweet as Lilly and it would be very hard to catch them during the day to check the wound and that they didn't take off the dressing. So I feel, maybe wrongly, that antiseptic offers some kind of safety from it getting infected during their day and I would not be able to see it.
I'm pretty excited to learn more about this though, and especially to find out if and how it is being used for animals that live outside.
Thank you again. I hope at some point, you will consider writing articles on some of those things where your explanations bring information that is very hard to find on BYC.
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Happy first hatch day, Mélisse, Annette, Lulu and Laure ! We may not have become as attached to you as we have with the first generation of chickens that hatched here but we are slowly getting to know you better and even to create a bond with Mélisse. Here is to a first healthy and happy year ! Birthday was celebrated by opening three cans of sardines in whole grain rice ; the party almost turned into a riot !
Also to counterbalance all the serious and sad talk on my recent posts, I want to share some goofy real life stuff. It took us a lot of times to decide on the pullets names, but about two months ago my partner found three of them stupid nicknames, and those have stuck.
Mélisse was named after the lemon balm that grows as a weed here. Her new nickname is Saucisse - sausage.
Annette was named after the wife of the neighbour who gave us the eggs.
She is now called either Cacahuète (peanut) or Cannette (can).
Lulu was named after both Annette's sister and RC's regretted crazy roadrunner. She is now named Cul-cul : bum-bum .
Only Laure has kept her real name because she is so weird we don't want to spook her !
I also think of Blanchon and Pied-beau today, their hatch brothers. Pied-beau and his hens have had three fox attacks in the last two weeks and apparently Pied-beau did really good, always putting himself between the fox and the hens so that the hens could move back to the shelter where they can perch on a roost so high they are safe. I worry of course, but Gaston's son is as smitten with Pied-beau as we were, and he is trying very hard to deter the fox.
Today I went for the first time in two years on a run to our local summit. I'm realising how important running is for my emotional stability so even if I will never catch up to the level I was or compete again, I'm trying to kick my butt to run enough to feel better and going back there felt like a milestone !
A beautiful warm day- finally in the usual temperature range.