Yipes! Poor Nina has a badly swollen foot!

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KarasKavies
For the love of my girls!

Post   » Sun Apr 27, 2003 3:53 am


Poor baby. It is so hard to see them "injured" in any way. I am glad she is doing a little better. What a long 2 weeks it has been for you too.

I wish I had something helpful to add. The one rescue sow I had with bumbblefoot took many weeks to heal, but it finally did. What seemed tohelp the most was wrapping the foot. Pinta mentioned to include the toes... that really helped a lot. I used the Nexcare "Active" bandaids. They are kind of spongy and stretchy. They stayed on quite well. The wrapping, including the toes, really, really helped.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun Apr 27, 2003 8:02 am


I have the feeling I'll always be watching them. It was very discouraging to have Nina remove some of the skin on the top of her foot. While things are getting better (I hope), the wrapped foot certainly does not look normal any more and is still larger than the other one, the toes curled and more swollen. It will be hard to decide when to quit wrapping the foot. I figure it will be a minimum of another week, perhaps two weeks or more before I can consider leaving it unwrapped.

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KarasKavies
For the love of my girls!

Post   » Tue Apr 29, 2003 11:01 pm


How is Nina's foot? I hope the wrapping is helping. It is a long and tedious recovery for sure.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Apr 30, 2003 7:26 am


She'll get her last dose of baytril this morning. So it's been 3 and a half weeks or so since I found her foot swollen.

I need to know more from people who have had pigs with bumblefoot. Maybe I'll make a list of questions to try to get enough information. I think it would help me to decide what kind of maintenance care I need to do on both front feet. Her back feet look okay at this time. She is such a soft little pig. At least she is back to making her happy noises.

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KarasKavies
For the love of my girls!

Post   » Thu May 01, 2003 3:04 am


I know that Patty's foot took months to heal. I had her then T had her and then I was in contact with her new mom. I got her in July and her new mom told me in Feb. that the last scab had finally fallen off. Geeze, that's a total of 7 months. During the months that I had her, it got MUCH better. Then it just kind of slowed down. BUT... it did heal!

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun May 04, 2003 12:17 pm


Well, for what it's worth, I decided not to wrap it yesterday. From watching her I felt it was worth not putting on the peppery spray to keep her from biting at it, since she generally showed no interest and I hoped it was originally done because of pain, discomfort and swelling. She did indeed leave it alone. This pic is about 4 weeks after I first noticed the swelling and a bit under 3 weeks since she pulled the skin off the top of her foot.

Things look healed and not swollen. I was concerned that her toes were going to stay squished together because of the wraps and felt getting some air and exercise might allow them to return to normal. This is what the top of her foot looks like today:

Image

You can see how well the skin has grown back and the hair even has grown out. The bottom of the foot has old dry skin that I feel needs to be naturally abraded off. This wasn't happening while it was wrapped.

So my plan is to monitor both front feet daily, do daily dilute chlorhexidine soaks, dry thoroughly and apply some preparation H. At the very least, I should be able to tell if the right foot starts swelling or if something ulcerates. It appears to me that the skin on the left foot (which was never wrapped) is thin.

One of the other benefits of daily soaking is that it will remove any poops that get stuck on the foot so they should not aggravate the situation.

Here's a small pic of Nina doing her foot soaks and a link to a bigger pic of her.

Bigger Pic

Image

Charybdis

Post   » Sun May 04, 2003 12:39 pm


Good news on the healing!

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lisam

Post   » Sun May 04, 2003 12:57 pm


That looks much better.

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Jill

Post   » Sun May 04, 2003 7:24 pm


I want to know how you get her to stay still!

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun May 04, 2003 8:30 pm


I don't know why she stands still either. I think she is resigned, but she never really gave me a hard time. What I would do was pet her, rub her jaws and talk to her. I'd usually get over five minutes of soaking time then thoroughly dry with a blow drier (after blotting off). She has taken to shivering so maybe she is scared too.

By the way, I have settled on a quarter cup of water and 1/4 tsp. of chlorhexidine gluconate. I prewarm the heavy feeding bowl with hot water, do a warm water mix and go get her for a soak. The feeding bowl is ideal as it holds the heat a bit and is very stable. I used to mix up 1/2 cup of solution but she got too wet. The smaller amount is adequate to cover her feet.

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Jill

Post   » Mon May 05, 2003 12:27 pm


She's a beautiful girl. Glad to hear her foot is better. Are you writing down your soakin and wrapping techniques? I'd never be able to remember the details.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon May 05, 2003 1:35 pm


I may stick up a page with my experiences and what I used (and what didn't work). I think this is going to be somewhat ongoing and I will always have to keep track of her feet.

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