Help! my chickens foot is huge!

Good evening, Ladies and gentlemen, my little chicken has grown a huge ball on her foot I gave her shots of penicillin for 7 days and soaked it in Epsom salts and smeared neosporin on it and wrapped it but it did nothing. it has been two weeks since i stopped doing anything and it seems to be developing a sore on it now, I have pictures you can see the new sore spot. it seems to hurt but she runs on it -she's very fast. Does anyone know what to do for this? Or have you seen it before?
Thanks for your help
MisLaDonna

Misladonna, your chicken has bumble foot. How do I know? Well the wealth of knowledge on this forum. I had one of my girls with the same problem. There is something foreign in the foot. Without much fuss, you can take a very sharp knife or clip it open with a pair of sharp scissors and lance the skin and clean out the hard white infection inside. Your chicken will not put up much of a fuss. It does not seem to hurt for some reason. At least my girl didn't she acted like she couldn't feel it at all. I washed it out really well with alcohol and I then packed the void with neosporin kept her on clean shavings and she healed in a couple days good as new.
Hope this helps.

i agree bumblefoot also. i would clean outside of it good with alcohol but inside i'd clean out with sterile saline. definately needs opened and cleaned out or will keep getting worse.

after all the nasty stuff is out i'd use bagbalm salve it is a drawout med. i used it on my hen who had frostbite feet that needed amputated. it will help to draw the puss and infection out into the bandages. after the bandages nolonger have drainage on them i'd then apply just dry bandages till healed or then add the antibiotic cream till healed. u don't want to heal to quick it will keep the infection inside. make sure it stays clean and i'd keep her seperated till sghe was healed.

yes we (my friend a chicken lady) did think it was bumblefoot at first but there is (wasn't until now) no discoloration or foreign object piercing the skin, it's not even hot. it does hurt her if you touch it she jerks it away. does bumble foot have to get bad before it shows itself? i did read a lot about it and this doesn't seam to have a core infection to be removed. I'm adding another photo. I'm afraid to just cut her with no indication of what i should be cutting out.

I'm not experienced enough to help you with the cut.. but I would say that cutting would be better than not doing anything. I would think that if you cut it, the relief is going to be huge.
If it were me, and I was doing it on my own, I'd try to feel for a soft spot if there is one, or a center spot.. Seems like that part of the skin is going to be tough and for it to naturally open could take a long time. Looks like between the dots on the first pic.
I don't have experience with chickens, but I've had to lance things on horses several times... it's always a huge relief to the animal.
Good Luck! I hope you can help her.

thanks for the help.
i'll let you all know how it goes. ")

Good luck misladonna,
I sure hope that it goes well for you and that your chicken gets some relief!

Yes, it is bumblefoot. On your first photo I see two areas that look like where you should lance the area. One is a small yellowish circle that looks sort of like an abscess and is near your thumb; the other is a small brown scab near the center of the swollen area.

Lance and scrape out as much gunk as possible. Use regular strength hydrogen peroxide to clean it out daily for about a week. You don't want the wound closing before all infection is gone. Keep on clean bedding and only loosely bandaged (no bandage would be better, but very impractical for the bottom of the foot).

Put her on a broad spectrum antibiotic that is effective against strep and staff (the most common bacteria causing bumblefoot).

I have no idea what this is but I have three words vet,vet and lastly vet!
Thats what I would do

how'd the bumble foot turn out?

yeah i've been wondering how the little girl is too. please update us.
thanks,
silkie

good morning Everyone, sorry it took so long to get back with you but you know how the holidays can be. anyway her foot is healed and she is finally back in the yard with the other girls, today is her first day back last nigh about ten I sneaked into her cage and put her in the coop with everyone else and this morning the acted like she'd never been gone :) here are some pictures i took of the "surgery" she acted like it hurt until I actually pierced the skin and let some on the pressure off and then she just acted like she was glad I had finally done something for her. this first picture is from the first "core"? I pushed out and yes after I cut the side and relieved some pressure I just pushed from the top of the foot and it came out. more pictures to follow. although i was so happy to finaly put her in with the rest of the girls i forgot to take an after picture sorry!

OK I guess that was the after both were out picture. here is what came out- kind of gross but easy to deal with. I packed the big hole (after I soaked it) with neosporine and wrapped it up and every day for two weeks I soaked it in Epsom salts and re-wrapped it until last night it looked healed over completely I decided to let her go home. also the foot is back to normal size! when I was done I couldn't believe it would actually go down but it did and she walks and runs fast! I know cause she got away once but luckily I only worked on her after dark and she only ran into the light so was easy to catch :-)
thank you all for your help and encouragement I wouldn't have known what to do without you and I know little “Golda” is a happy girl too thanks :-)

*gag* I shouldn't have looked at this just after eating. HA!

I'm VERY glad to hear that she's doing so well, though! Good job on your first surgery!!!

wow! That is awsome that you did it yourself. Not so sure that I could have done the same. I am so glad it has a happy ending! (Patting you on the back)

Thud

Oh ya, thats for sure, get the smelling salts! Jenks is down...I repeat...man down!

that looks like a piece of grisel yuck, I have a pet rat that has a big knot like that on her side, Im not sure if I am brave enough to remove it

Oh dear, Jenks is out for the count, somebody get her a hot cushion for her head. I have extracted several of these from chicken feet and they are NOT pretty and they smell really bad too. I don't look forward to doing it again. The ones I did came from a rescue where they had been in gross conditions.

I am guessing anything on the side of a rat is more likely to be a tumor. This is a clear case of bumblefoot in chickens which is a well documented condition of an infection developing inside the foot - usually a result of a small cut or splinter to start with, but I don't think rats get bumblefoot on their sides! I'd say that's a job for the vet!

Ya, me either! I am the one who ....Thud!
I am all about taking them to the vet when things arise.
I am not surgen material. hehehe

Pumpkinfreak, I have had pet rats for years and i would bet money that your rat has a tumor. They are very common in rats. Please don't lance it they can have a substantial blood supply. I would take it to the vet many times they are beign and easily treated.

I will call my vet and ask if I can bring her in and see about having it removed, I hope its benign

They removed a mammary tumor on my 2 year old rat, Tarquin, a few years ago. She did very well. You want to catch them early. Unfortunately pet rats are derived from lab rat lines that were originally bred to be prone to tumors.

But one thing that is fortunate is that because rats are used so extensively in research vets know A LOT about them. My family just lost our pet rat (Fredrick) in Oct. do to respitory issues and he was just about 2yrs old. We just got another one last week, I wish they lived longer they are really great pets. Can anybody tell me how long their rats lived so I can have hope that Charlete may have a chance to live longer.

They say, unfortunately, it is about 2 1/2 to 3 years. It is so sad because they are really exceptional pets. A lot like dogs--they love you and respond to you and are so clever. People just don't realize how wonderful they are. I do know that diet is extremely important--if you feed them the seed mix some pet stores sell as rat and mice food they will develop neurological problems and die. The rat blocks are balanced--and even then I think it helps to supplement them with varied foods.

My nephew has always had Rats for pets.
His recently died. I would like to get him another but his father says no.
I gotta respect that request. :(

I have 3 rats, they love to ride on the shoulders of my kids and myself.

My cousin always had a rat for a pet as long as I could remember. They are very smart. He would build elaborate mazes for them to keep them from being bored. His Boyscout troop would get a kick on how fast he could run through.

Our rat rides on my shoulder or around my feet. The one we just lost (Fredrick) would get in our pantry and he could really make a mess. He would open EVERYTHING up and leave it and go on to the next. One time he took 16 slim Jims from the pantry and put them in the rabbit's cage. When I found them I couldn't figure out way there were Slim Jims on the floor of the rabbit's cage. Then Fredrick appeared and the mystery was solved. Pumpkinfreak-please keep me up to date on the rat with the lump.

I will