Turkey Bumblefoot- not getting pus/kernel out

[danceonweeds]

Tina, our 8 month old white rescue turkey has bumblefoot! I know white breasted turkeys are meat birds and not meant to love long. Tina is doing great, free range, not overweight, good mobility beyond the bumblefoot. She is not even limping much, just slightly.



For the past week and half, I've been soaking it in Espon Salt/calendula for 10 minutes, picking off the scab with tweezers, spraying with vetrycin, applying Prid and keeping wrapped. I've delt with bumblefoot surgery in my hens, but this turkey foot is a whole other beast and is fairly swollen.



I have not gotten to any pus, and when I start to dig around it always starts to bleed. I'm being cautious as I don't want to introduce more bacteria, but at this point I know the abcess is still in it. I guess I just need to know how much to dig without making it worse. Since her foot pad is much larger than a chickens, there is a lot of different directions to dig in. Any help would be appreciated. I've checked out YouTube but the videos are either mild chicken infections or severe, neither which is the case for poor Tina.

 

[coach723]

Greetings in Willamette Valley, I grew up there!
I'm sorry no one answered you. I don't have turkey's but have treated some nasty ones on chickens. I would do the same for this one. Either soak the foot in epsom salts to soften it up, or if the bird won't tolerate that you can apply some decolorized iodine (not the same as betadine, it's in the first aid section usually, small bottle) and wrap the foot over night. That usually softens it up. Then I would remove the scab, clean out as much of the gunk as you possibly can, and flush it out well. There does appear to be pus in there to me. It's going to be firm and cheesy in texture, and white to creamy yellow color. There may be some bleeding, but it shouldn't bleed copiously. Have some sterile saline and some oral syringes, and a roll of paper towels, flush it out as needed so you can see what you are doing. You can stop and put pressure on it if needed. Once it's cleaned out, pack it with sugardine (link below with more info on that an a picture of one of my birds feet treated with that) which is betadine mixed in plain white sugar. Pack the hole, and bandage the foot to keep it clean and dry. You will need to repeat that daily until you know it's healing up. If any gunk remains in there it will regenerate and you will need to clean it out again.
See post #8 here, there is a video on sugardine at the bottom:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/bumblefoot-not-healing.1443809/