I was sitting with the chickens, and noticed one of them had swelling between her toes. An examination of her foot showed a soft lump and a plug of mud in the center. She was walking fine, but I caught her up and rinsed the foot with wound spray and picked out the mud, then I wrapped it up. When my eldest got home, we unwrapped it and I was able to work the rest of the plug out of her foot (ew). We rinsed it well with wound spray, put some gauze on it, and rewrapped it. I had to wrap around her toes, but I was able to wrap in in such a way that she could still walk and she perched just fine that night.

We checked on her foot the next day and the swelling is down and the hole is healing up! We wrapped the foot back up. My understanding is that this is bumble foot. The chicken (or duck) gets something foreign stuck in their foot and it gets infected. This is actually the second foot I’ve picked a mud pack out of. The first one was on Seashell and it was already mostly healed; the mud plug didn’t come out with extra … stuff. Heavier breeds are more prone to this malady since there is a larger impact on their feet when they jump down.