Friday 18 September 2009

Bumblefoot Chicken

Bumblefoot in Chickens

The symptoms of bumblefoot are limping and a large soft swelling on bottom of foot. Usually bumblefoot is due to bruises or small wounds. Some possible causes are jumping from perches that are too high; jumping on a hard surface from the perch or other high spot; long periods on hard floors or runs; extremely narrow perches. I am not a vet but from what I have read it seems to me that the main consensus of all the methods I have seen is that mild cases may go away if the blumblefoot is cleaned up and kept clean, and more serious cases will need the ‘bumble’ part removing and then the wound kept clean until healed (there are many different variations of antiseptic and antibiotics available)

Mild Cases of Bumblefoot

In mild cases of bumblefoot the bottom of the foot is swollen and is inflamed and noticeably painful.



Treatment (as recommended in the Success With Poultry book) : Washing in warm water and applying boric acid ointment (to make boric acid ointment add one part boric acid to five parts vaseline).

Method :

1. Hold the foot in warm water for about ten minutes
2. Apply boric acid ointment
3. Repeat this once each day for three days, keeping the bird confined on soft earth or in a coop with some sort of soft bedding.

Below is a video of a rooster being treated for a mild case of bumblefoot.



In aggravated cases, abscesses form and the ‘bumble’ will need to be removed and the wound cleaned (I will list the basic method below, but it may be something you would prefer your vet to do):

1. Soak the foot in warm water for about ten minutes
2. Then with a very sharp knife or scalpel try to work around the ‘bumble’ pulling back the edges of the scab (the trademark bumblefoot black scab may be like a plug hiding puss at a deeper level).
3. Remove all the puss and clean the wound thoroughly with lukewarm water. You should be left with a clean hole.
4. The Success With Poultry book then suggests dusting it with iodoform and applying the boric acid ointment – an alternative to this step 4 would be to fill the hole with an antibiotic cream such as Neosporin.
5. Bandage the foot with cotton or use vetrap (or similar)and dress it daily as (4) above


2 comments:

April said...

Thank you!!! I found this extremely helpful as I need to do this to one of my hens tomorrow when my vetwrap arrives. I wasn't sure how to make the little shoe, but this video was perfect and makes it look easy. Thank you again!

Unknown said...

This video is super helpful! We treated our hen today, learning about the vet wrap bandage encouraged us to treat our hen ourselves. She seemed so grateful, I'm confident that she will get better. thank you