Very young baby with badly infected foot! Help!

[Weeg]

By the way, AVC is apple cider vinegar that's unfiltered. It's a nice additive to chicken water, but it won't cure anything.

It wont save her or anything, but it may help to give a boost. Vitamins and electrolytes are good too.

 

[Eggcessive]

Sorry about your chick’s foot. It could have been stepped on or stuck under a feeder at the feed store. Hopefully you can save the foot with soaking it and using some hibiclens (chlorhexidene) in the water from your pharmacy to disinfect it. The toes will likely fall off eventually, but chickens can survive without some toes. This is very similar to frostbite of the foot and the care is the same. Let us know how the chick gets along.

 

[lovemyroos]

Update!

The tips of all three front toes turned black and shriveled up, and one of them has fallen off; she has about half a toe left there. I'm sure she'll lose the other two as well, but she should be able to walk fine regardless. The worst is behind us.

The rest of her foot is recovering well. It's not purple anymore, although it's still swollen. It doesn't look puffy exactly, it almost looks like it's just healed like that--bigger than the other foot. Earlier on, the skin in some areas sloughed off and she had raw weeping wounds underneath. That crusted over and the scales and skin remaining also turned crusty and have been peeling, but underneath all the crust is nice soft normal-colored skin, so I'm pleased with that. I don't honestly think now that it was ever actually infected; I think the crust was just serosanguineous fluid and the initial inflammation was just from being crushed/having circulation cut off. No purulent drainage, no inflammation once the initial response to the injury calmed down.

All I've been doing is warm soaks (sometimes with Epsom salt, sometimes just water) and antibiotic ointment on the foot. The warm soaks helped with the inflammation and really seemed to help with the pain as well.

I'll try to take pictures later, although my camera's still broken haha.

 

[Sally PB]

Sending positive waves!

 

[Eggcessive]

Thanks for the update. Let us know how she gets along and heals.