Bumblefoot in Chickens

This is Raspberry.  She is 9 months old, as are most of our chickens.  She is our largest pullet, lays the largest light brown, almost white eggs, and is very friendly.

Raspberry has developed bumblefoot in both her feet.  Bumblefoot is when the bottom of the foot becomes swelled and infected.  A scab (bumble) will appear on the bottom of the pad of the foot.  None of our other chickens have this issue, just Raspberry.  She shows no signs of pain in her feet at all, she still jumps and runs, absolutely no limping or slowing down. 

Her left foot was worse than her right, so we decided we'd better treat her, as we didn't want her going lame.  We figured we'd start with the left foot, and when that one got better we'd treat her right foot.

We started by soaking her feet in warm water to clean them, then put antibiotic ointment on her left foot and wrapped it as shown in this video.  Raspberry is very calm and it is relatively easy to wrap her foot.  We did this for 3 days, re-wrapping it every day with a fresh bandage.  During the day she ran outside with the other chickens with her bandaged foot. 

 

After 3 days of being wrapped with antibiotic ointment, her left foot was very soft and the black bumble scab came off the bottom of her foot.  Puss came out, and we cleaned it again, covered the wound in antibiotic ointment, bandaged it, and let her loose.  She ran around as if it didn't hurt at all.  A week later the foot has all healed and has no bumble (scab) on the bottom.  The bottom pad of her foot still looks swelled up, so we are still treating it and wrapping it every day.  After her daily treatments we reward Raspberry with a variety of treats, from corn (her favorite) to cut up cooked liver, broccoli, or anything else we happen to have available.  I think she looks forward to her treat time every evening.  And she still lays eggs for us every morning.