At risk of bumblefoot?

[thebunster]

I have read a few articles about 'bumblefoot' which say that one of the causes can be repeated landing when jumping down from heights.

This has now made me think - in their walk-in-run, my girls have a number of branches to perch on about 2 or 3 ft off the ground. They also have a 'chicken cottage' style house which is in the walk-in-run, so they often stand on the roof of the cottage (about 4 ft high) and jump down from there

The floor of the run is loose soil, and although my girls are large fowl none of them are particularly heavy breeds.

Even so, could I be putting them at risk of injury?

[Skeksis]

A lot will disagree with me but I personally do not have anything over 2' high for them to jump down from and even then it is set up so that they prefer to walk up and down ramps. Prevention is better than cure, however I have extremely large and heavy hens

[HenPen]

Hello, I am just treating two of mine for bumblefoot - and having spent upwards of £200 on vet bills, I am very firmly with Skeksis.

I have a hard floor in the run and had a bench in there and my really heavy girl loved to perch on the arm. Well that was the first thing to go.
(Before the bumblefoot, I had realised the bench was a bit high so put several small pallets in front to provide gentle steps down, so they didn't need to jump. But if scared or excited they would always choose to crash down to the ground from the arm, so that didn't actually solve anything.)

In my case I think there were several contributory factors, not least that the worst affected hen is overweight. I am trying to address all the factors but there will be no perches until they are completely better and then I will put in some very low perches which will be purpose made and smoothed off, the correct width just like the ones in the coop. I have also put some turves down to make it springy underfoot and am amazed to find that they are still mostly intact a week later. I left in the wood shavings (which I had used to replace the wood chip, which I felt was a contributory factor too) so it looks a bit of a dog's dinner but at least it is gentle on their tootsies!
Over-cautious - well yes! I have been worried sick about the girls, worn to a frazzle looking after them, feeling horribly guilty about the mistakes I made and those vet bills were a bit of a shock coming from nowhere!

My coop is one of the Devon ones from Coops Direct, raised up a bit so they can get underneath, so the pitch is about 4ft off the ground, and I have a normal sized galvanised bin in the run with their feed in it. I notice my tiny lightweight girls are the only ones who regularly go on the coop, and only the smallest one uses the bin as a look out point. Now they are fully grown, the two mid-sized/mid-weight ones only go up on the coop if they get shut out in the evening by the auto door (but as I now leave the back door open until my night time check, so I haven't seen them on the roof for months) and my really heavy hen, who is most at risk, avoids going that high.

So from the point of view of the coop roof, perhaps if they can get up there, they can probably get down safely. Also, my feeling is that if they have to use their wings - as they would from a 4ft height - it is better than when it is just a bit too high, say 2 to 3 ft, and they jump without using their wings to soften the landing and land with a bump. That, of course, is just an amateur opinion based on what I have seen of my own.

Hope this is helpful. Sorry, bit long, the subject is very much on my mind!

[chookmike]

I agree with your concern - we have an affected hen and no vet has cured her. She now just lives with it and the bumbles swell and then reduce over weeks and months, occasionally erupting through the scales and we then pull the dried pus out and apply antibiotic cream. It must be a permanent strain on the immune system though.

I think the most obvious precautions are checking the ground for sharp objects and keeping the perches low -I agree with Skeksis about the height and also building things for them to walk down by rather than jumping. We have a lot of flint here so that is picked up during the walk round each day. Their run had a green house on it 10 years ago and they are still unearthing broken glass, metal glazing clips and other rubbish.

We all know they like to get off the ground at night, but provided they get as high as they are able - ie on the highest thing provided then I think that satisfies the instinct and it doesn't matter whether that height is 6 inches or 6 feet, so keep them low.

I just saw Hen Pen's post and she makes very good sense too. Our girl has cost a small fortune and still not cured so far easier not to get it.

I'll bet we all used wire snips when we built and fenced our runs - did we pick up every little trimming? I'm still finding them....and we started with roosts 5 feet off the ground as the book said height was good. Beginners errors and I share HP's guilt.

Have a good weekend in the sun

Cheers

Mike

[HenPen]

Ps I do hope it was clear I wasn't advocating 4ft high perches!

And now we have cheered everyone up with our tales of woe, as Mike says

Have a good weekend in the sun