If you are squeamish about blood, and infectious drainage please do not continue reading this post. I will open with a picture of the chicken involved in the bumble foot surgery so those not wishing to look can click out now. The little white hen in the foreground is an Icelandic hen I call Barn Girl. I do so because she is obsessed with the barn and sneaks in wherever she can. One day she fell and got wedged between the workbench and the wall while trying to lay an egg in a paint roller tray. She is a sweet little hen with a serious barn obsession. For those looking for information about bumble foot and how to treat it keep reading. Everyone else, git while the gittin’s good.
There is a very good article about Bumblefoot written by Peter Brown, of First State Veterinary Supply. You can find his article HERE.
Now for a little history regarding Barn Girl and bumblefoot. She had an abscess on the outside of her foot in July which I opened up and drained and treated with antibiotic ointment and dressings. Here is a picture of the wound in July.
It healed nicely and she was walking normally until a few days ago I saw her limping. I took her down from the roost tonight, brought her to the house and this is what I saw.
After cleaning the foot with an antiseptic made for for animals, it was clearly a case of bumblefoot with the classic dark scab.
I gathered the supplies I thought I would need from my poultry first aid kit. Here’s what I used. A scalpel with a #11 blade:
I also laid out vet wrap, alcohol swabs, tweezers, cotton-tipped applicators, paper towels, a styptic pencil roller, a can of blood stop powder, triple antibiotic ointment, a syringe with a 20 gauge needle, vinyl gloves and towels.
I wrapped Barn Girl papoose style with one towel, covering her head with just the foot extended. It was snug but not too tight. This procedure was going to take awhile so I wanted her to be still but comfortable. Covering the head seems to keep them calm. Only a couple of times did she pull her foot away from me when I was cutting with the scalpel. Other than that, she was quiet. Her foot was so swollen that I imagine the release of the pressure caused her pain to improve immediately. You can see her foot sticking out in the next picture.
The second towel I used to cover my work surface. I used a small portable light to direct at the wound. I tried to pull the scab out with the tweezers but it would not come out. I used the scalpel to carefully excise the dark scab.
Once the scab was removed I used the tip of the scalpel to open a small area inside the wound. It began to bleed profusely. I used the styptic pencil but it didn’t work. I also tried using superglue to close the tiny cut that was oozing blood but it didn’t work either. I also tried using blood stop powder which did not stop the bleeding either. The grey/black stuff you will see in the next few pictures is blood stop powder.
I opened up the wound a bit more until the exudate (pus) began to come out. There was so much in there. I probably got this much out ten times by pressing on the swollen areas and pushing towards the opening. I also have a glove blow-out.
Eventually I got drainage out and was able to locate the solid plug and squeeze it out. That is the key in bumblefoot surgery. You need to get the cottage cheesy material out or it will just re-infect, which it could do anyway.
Once I had as much of the infected material out as I could get I went back to trying to stop the bleeding. Ultimately it required two sutures to close the little cut on the bottom of the wound and the bleeding stopped immediately. I did not have real sutures so I improvised with a sewing needle and nylon thread. You will see part of my sewing supplies in the next
With the bleeding under control, the drainage removed and the swelling gone, I cleaned the wound out, packed it with triple antibiotic ointment and fashioned a dressing out of vet wrap. I secured it with a safety pin.
Here is the patient immediately after surgery.
She looks better than the surgical suite does! It looked like a scene from a horror movie. Everything got cleaned up and scrubbed with antimicrobial cleaner.
I know she looks mad here but she is just hot. She had an elevated temp to begin with and wrapping her in the towel made it worse. Her wings are flared to cool her body and her beak is open to cool her via respirations.
She had a shot of penicillin and then drank a lot of water before being put to bed in a small cage in the garage. I will update tomorrow on her condition.
If you have a bird with bumblefoot you have three options. You can take the bird to a vet for the surgery, you can do it yourself, or you can do nothing and see what happens. This type of injury can kill a chicken and even after the surgery they can still die. I am a registered nurse and for many years was first surgical assistant in doing peritoneal dialysis cather surgeries on our patients. I am quite used to blood, guts and pus so I felt comfortable doing this. I read a lot of articles before attempting it myself though and recommend that to anyone considering doing bumblefoot surgery.
Please wear gloves, wash everything in antimicrobial solution afterwards or discard them. I have a first aid kit for chickens with supplies that are used only for them. I will post the contents of my kit soon if you want to put one together for yourself.
Very often the infection causing bumblefoot is staphylococcus aureus, which can and will infect humans. I cannot streess enough the importance of having the right supplies on hand, taking your time, and being extremely careful.
Updates to come!
UPDATE:
Barn Girl is doing well this morning. I removed her dressing and the foot is still very swollen but I was not able to express anything out of the wound. I soaked her foot in warm water with disinfectant for about a half hour while she stood in my lap, repacked it with antibiotic ointment, and redressed. Here she is soaking her foot while soaking up some rays!
Terri Doria says
Two years ago I had two leghorns with bumble foot. Treated with several surgeries (and antibiotic ointment), as the infection kept returning. One of my girls died. I then treated the 2nd with antibiotic injections in the feet for over a week. She recovered and has done fine for over a year. She just got bumble foot again. Immediately did surgery and she is on a regiment of antibiotic injections to the foot. Hopefully she will again recovery fully. My Leghorns seem to have a thinner, more susceptible foot pad then the other birds. I watch them carefully to nip it in the bud if/when it does occur.
Morgan Lybarger says
hey, i just realized this on my roo so i was looking all over for people who had done it before. thanks so much!
Tina Powell says
Just wanted to give a BIG “Thank You” for having this info available. I have A Golden Lace that had a severe case of bumble foot. I had never heard of it, until I noticed her limping and saw the nodes on her foot. I did attempt the soaking in the Tricide-Neo powder first. However, after praying and reading, Looking at your pictures and notes and watching a video from another site decided to go ahead and remove with surgery since there seemed to be no improvement with that method. (extreme case) I acquired all the necessary items and with my sweet Momma by my side talking and helping to hold her (praying the whole time)after about an hour was able to remove two huge kernels. Cleaned her up, bandaged her foot. I let her de-stress and pet her, then returned her to the flock. She is doing fine so far. I did notice a smaller one on the other foot, but decided to let her recover from this first.( Also another Golden lace has one starting as well…phew!) I lowered my roost also to help with these heavier hens. I have never had this problem before. But I now have the knowledge and experience to take care of it when it occurs. Thanks again!!
Mary says
Thank you for your kind comment. I hope your girl continues to improve. I have found that if they pretty much have to jump straight down then a lower roost is better. If they have room to jump out and dow they seem to do fine. I know theory enjoy the higher roost but it isn’t always good for them. I have found they will use a ramp or ladder to get up but not down! Thanks again.
janet pesaturo says
There is a noninvasive method of treating bumblefoot. You can soak it in an antibiotic solution called TricideNeo. It is used to treat staph resistant skin infections on koi fish, and can be purchased where koi pond supplies are sold. I’ve successfully treated 3 cases of bumblefoot with it. No guarantee it will work for every case, but the cases I treated had swelling and scabs that looked just like the one in the photo on this post, and every bird completely recovered without recurrence. It’s painless for the bird, no cutting is involved, the foot need not be wrapped, and the chicken need not be separated from the flock. If anyone wants more info, contact me via my blog. I plan to post on it eventually, but if there is no post on it when you visit, just contact me.
Mary says
That is good information Janet. Luckily I haven’t had another case since Barn Girl, but I will try that if I do. My roosts are much closer to the floor in the new coops and I can’t help but think that is better. Please come back after you make your post and I’d love to reference it as an alternative treatment.
janet pesaturo says
I’ll try to remember to come back here after I get the post done – I’ve been meaning to write it for a while, but so many posts I want to write are seasonal, so I keep putting the bumblefoot one off! Maybe I’ll have a lull after foraging season is over. Thanks for your interest!
janet pesaturo says
Just thought I’d come back and provide the link to my post on using TricideNeo to treat bumblefoot, in case anyone is interested:
http://ouroneacrefarm.com/bumblefoot-treatment-tricideneo/
MichaelO says
Thanks so much Janet. Hope to see you back soon 😉
Jim Aldrich says
Would you be able to send me this kit’s list? Thank you, Jim
“I have a first aid kit for chickens with supplies that are used only for them. I will post the contents of my kit soon if you want to put one together for yourself.”
Allison says
Did the infection re-occur and did you need to do anything in the coop to prevent possible spread to your flock? How did you isolate your hen so her eggs could be removed from the rest of your flock after antibiotic? Where did you come by a syringe for the antibiotic? Our agway carries the combiotic which is recommended for this Tx, but not the syringe. I currently have 2 white orpingtons with this – that we know of. It could be on some of the other girls and we don’t know it. I do need to check each foot more closely. Our flock is 13 birds. I did the surgery last summer on 3 hens, which seemed to take care of it, but my white aracauna (the worst one from last summer) suddenly took ill in June and we realized it was back and she was dead in under a week. We tried clearing out the coop’s run and even spraying with bleach solution. We do not know why it keeps recurring. It seems that few of our backyard flock friends seem to struggle with this.
Diana says
Wow, you did an incredible job on your girl! Great work 🙂 Now it’s time for me to give it a shot on my girl… 😉