06/21/2026
Of all the days for Poppy to develop a swollen foot, she picked the one with a national news crew filming her for The Rooster Registry segment. 😅🤦🏼♀️ The chickens, it turns out, do not care what day it is or who's watching. Just my luck, right? I can’t tell you how pleased I was to notice her foot in the middle of them getting TONS of footage of her.
The important thing though is that I did notice and that she is being treated. It would have been better if I had noticed BEFORE they came though. 🤷🏼♀️
I got a look at her after they went home and it’s definitely a bumblefoot infection. At some point she must have cut or scratched her foot and bacteria got in there to cause an infection. Poor girl. She’s not limping at all but I imagine it’s sore. It looks sore.
Poppy has not been a cooperative patient so far. She does not want to sit nicely on my lap, she does not want me touching her foot, and she is deeply unimpressed that there is now something ON her foot. I ended up covering the end of the vet wrap with a super sticky bandaid (not touching her skin, just holding the wrap down) because otherwise she'd have it undone in under a minute flat.
A couple of years ago she had bumblefoot in this exact same foot, and by the time it healed she'd turned into an absolute professional about sitting still for treatment. She has apparently filed that memory under "things I no longer need to know."
In case it's useful to anyone else dealing with this, here's how I treat bumblefoot without cutting, squeezing, or digging around in the foot.
How I Treat Bumblefoot (Non-Surgical Method)
1) Wash the foot well to remove dirt, disinfect with chlorhexidine, then dry thoroughly. If the foot's especially dirty, a quick soak in warm water first can help - just the foot, not the whole bird. A cup of water works fine for this, just stick their foot in it while you hold them.
2) Apply a generous dollop of drawing salve (I use ichthammol salve, the white tub with the black lid labelled “Trimol” in the kit photo).
3) Cover the salve with a pre-cut square of non-adherent gauze. The salve holds it in place for the next step (unless the chicken is particularly kicky and trying to escape).
4) Wrap the foot with a 1" wide strip of vet wrap, starting above the back toe and wrapping around under the foot several times, passing between each toe, ending back where you started. A small bandaid over the end of the wrap helps stop a determined chicken from picking it loose. Just make sure the toes can move freely and nothing's pinched.
That's really it. Repeat this process every other day, unless your chicken removes the bandage sooner or it’s quite wet/muddy out (every day is better then). A quick photo at each change makes it easy to track healing. Unfortunately I have not done this step, getting Pop bandaged quickly before she wiggles away has been the priority so far, so I’ll have to rely on my memory until she is better about letting me treat her.
I'll try to get some better pictures for you guys but, for now, you get a photo of my chicken foot care kit, a picture of the wrapped foot (before the bandaid was added), and a video of Poppy attempting to undo all of my hard work in real time.
