First Medical Intervention on a Chicken

Very minor, yet I did our first medical intervention on one of our Sussex roosters. We got fifteen 40-week old Sussex chickens last week. One rooster has a bumble foot, another one has broken feet / toes, and everyone else has pretty long nails. I took care of everything except what looks to me like the broken foot/toes. That will have to wait till a tad more reading or we will just eat that roosters since we have a little too many roosters to hens.

Not sure exactly what their situation was before. They might have unloaded the problematic or in need of maintenance birds. That is okay we are up for the job.

I’ve been reading two books everyday the past two weeks : The Chicken Health Handbook and Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens. We have 20 baby ducks and about 40 baby chickens coming in this month, and I don’t want to loose any because we aren’t prepared or attentive.

So! This afternoon I set up our chicken/duck first aid kit and went about clipping toe nails and treating a very large bumble foot. The process took about an hour as I used the soaking the foot method then dissection instead of full on excising the abscess/bumble. I loved it! I think the chicken hated it but not as much as I expected and was pretty happy frolicking around the yard afterwards humping two of his favorite ladies.