Lesson 477 – Post surgical update on Charlie’s webbed toe release

24 Jan 2012 2 Comments

by Wendy Thomas in Backyard Chickens, Charlie, chicken care, Chicks Tags: backyard chickens, Black Copper Maran, chick Charlie, releasing webbed toes, webbed toes, Wendy Thomas

Many people have contacted me about Charlie and are interested in following her results. It’s now been roughly 2 days since I performed a little bit of surgery on her toes to release some webbing.

If you recall before I started, her toes looked like this:

You can see the webbing and deformation in this photo.

Charlie is a sweet chick but those feet were probably not going to hold up the weight of a full grown chicken which is why I decided to try and release the toes.

Charlie is doing well, the wounds have closed and she is walking around. Last night we introduced a stick as a roosting post hoping that the use of it would get her to start moving her toes (chicken physical therapy) but she prefers the edge of the cardboard box which she came home in and which is still in her cage.

That wooden candy cane was too slippery to be used for roosting.

But here’s the good news.

This is her right foot.

And this is that one that was horribly deformed.

Her left foot is still curled, especially that middle toe,  (some of that is extra tissue from the webbing) and we may be putting a shoe on it in the next few days but compared to what it was, this is nothing short of amazing. Granted Charlie is not going to win any pretty toe contests in the next few weeks but it does look like she’s going to win her adulthood.

And that’s just fine with me.

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