by Wendy EN T
homas from Lessons Learned from the Flock
It’s the second time I’ve noticed this in a bird in my flock. Somehow, part of a toe seems to be missing.
It’s odd because I’ve never seen any of the birds limping, and I certainly haven’t noticed any kind of trauma or injury, and I refuse to believe that parts of toes just fall off – like some sort of mutant fowl leprosy. So what gives?
My guesses are that:
- part of the toe might have been bitten off by a predator (although I really don’t think this is the case)
- there was an infection of some sort (although again, I never saw any limping which you would see with a long term infection) which caused part of the toe to die and fall off
- the toe got snagged on something (wire?) and it pulled away and eventually off (this seems like the most likely scenario.)
I don’t know what happened to the toes, all I know is that part of it is gone.
Apparently this is not as strange as it might sound, if you do a search of chickens with lost toes, you’ll find a few (granted not many) accounts from chicken owners who suddenly find that a flock member’s toe is all of the sudden – *poof* – gone.
It makes some sense – chickens use their feet to walk, roost, and, of course, to scratch all day in the yard. There are bound to be injuries.
In our situation, the chicken without the toe is Charlie. She is our Black Copper Marans who has always had wonky feet. When she was a newborn, I had to cut her webbed toes apart and as a result, well, let’s just say that she would never win a chicken beauty contest (although she will always win my heart.) It is understandable that because of her misshapen toes, she might get foot injuries.
But last spring when the girls finally came out of the coop, we had another chicken (with perfectly normal feet) who also emerged with a partial toe.
If I had seen an injury, I would have put ointment on and bandaged it, just as I would have with any other wound. But I saw nothing. Our hearty chickens seem to be able to occasionally drop toes and still carry on as if nothing had happened.
It is a mystery. Although our chickens certainly don’t seem worse for the wear, it is a bit disconcerting to find partial toes. You can bet I’ll be in the hen house this weekend, inspecting all wires, roosts, bedding, and the coop yard in order to make sure we are not harboring any possible unknown dangers to our flock’s delicate chicken toes.
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Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.
Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com) She writes about her chickens for GRIT, Backyard Poultry, Community Chickens, and Mother Earth News.
24 Comments
We have also had a case of frostbite. Some of our birds had mild frostbite, one had more severe frostbite.
She is in the house in a room with no heat.
We do not want her being picked on because she is weak. I had the brainy (brainless) idea of bringing a friend in..after she started picking on her I put her out.
Could this be a case of cannibalism?
My understanding is they start with the feet.
Just another idea for you to consider.
i would be gratefull for any advice .sincerly John
One of my hens lost a toe when she made the mistake of sitting in my horse’s food trough. I had a few minutes of panic seeing blood on my horses mouth and blood droplets leading to the victim. All is well and the chickens are no longer near the horses.
One of my roosters lost all of his toes down to the first joint during one winter two years ago most likely due to frostbite I gave him some disinfectant spray for roughly three days and wrapped his toes with toilet paper taped around and he has been continued to live his life to the fullest sadly I was only in fifth grade and wasn’t certain what to do I kinda just “winged” it 😉 and he’s has been doing great.
These don’t really answer my question I have. My baby chick that is a few weeks old lost all it’s nails and it only has a stump on the ends. It’s smooth, no blood, and I wouldn’t of noticed if I hasn’t picked him up because it was getting picked on by one of its siblings. The other 5 don’t have that and it’s mother isn’t picking on it. Can someone please help with this?
Hi Alexandra,
The lack of toe nails happens sometimes. It’s usually a result of lack of nutrition in the egg. If there is no injury to treat, the chick may just grow up without nails. Keep an eye on the bird as it grows. Because chickens “scratch” for their food by instinct, you don’t want her rubbing her toes raw, though the skin on their feet is pretty touch.
As to not noticing anything wrong before toes “go missing,” I think it’s important to remember that chickens are basically prey animals and would be likely to hide some hurts, rather than appear weaker. This is probably also increased by the fact that they live in a strict “pecking order” environment. The weaker get picked on – so don’t look weak!
I have had chickens lose toes. One of them was living in the house (finished basement) at the time. He’s an older rooster and a very special guy who just could no longer handle the cold winters. When he got sick last Fall, I moved him in, thinking it would just be for the Winter, but it turned out that he loves living in the house (and lording it over all of us!). He has a cage, but gets to spend a lot of time out of it with me.
Since I spend a lot of time with him every day, it was really a shock to me to realize that he had lost several toes after moving into the house. I think it was just a circulation problem, and he’s done very nicely with pretty much no toes on one foot.
My cockerel has freshly lost a toe up to the first joint and is bleeding profusely. He is aggressive and I’ve never been able to handle him, so I can’t pick him up and examine him. I don’t know how this could have happened, or what I can do for him.
You know, I think I have to go with frostbite. That might explain why I didn’t see any blood. And both times it’s happened have been during the winter. I’m still, however, going to keep an eye open on our flock’s toes. (now that’s certainly a gross image!) because in the end, I don’t know for sure.
Thank you all for your suggestions, each one has been carefully considered.
Wendy
After I used the Blu-Kote, our hen seemed to do just fine. For a couple of days after it happened though, she didn’t want to leave the coop. Now I’m thinking maybe it was frost bite.
Hello i have 12 black sex-link chickens and only one of our females is missing both of her middle toenails. There is no visable cuticle or any indicators that they had been ripped out. Could she have been born without middle toenails? Or is it a result of something eles that may have happened?
Okay, there’s something totally different we’ve noticed, and yesterday (Monday), I separated one hen we have from the others. Its the same hen that lost the tip of a toe back a while. I picked up some Blu-Kote http://drnaylor.com/product/blu-kote/ from Tractor Supply and the hen’s foot seems to be doing fine now.
We’ve had some really cold and windy weather here that might have played a big part in our problems. The same hen we call Goldy now has a flat comb, not bleeding, just flat. I’ve never seen that in any of the chickens before, and we have 40 at this time. Does anyone know what would cause this?
Frostbite
Sometimes a fine strong feather or piece of fiber will wrap around and cut off blood supply. One time we had a bantam Polish rooster whose foot came off because of a long strong hackle feather getting wrapped around his lower leg. The feather looked like a fine strand of silk but it was a long feather from our Sumatra. The affected Polish bantam died later from infection that started in that bone. If it had been just a toe, it seems to me that he might have had a better chance of survival because the injury would have been more easily covered by the skin of the joint just above it.
frost bite?
More than likely the missing toes are due to frostebite, we see it happen in really cold winters.
One of ours lost part of a toe last spring. We never knew why, just figured she lost it by scratching up some glass. I would like to know if this happened to others though.
It’s scaly leg mites.
When I first read your article, I figured the birds may have frozen their toes to a roost. My guineas used to refuse to come inside the coop in the winter, and when they’d roost in the trees in the bitter cold, a couple of them lost toes! I know, it’s gross.
The other thing I thought of is that while they are asleep roosting at night in the dark, it may be possible that mice would chew on their toes. Those are the only two explanations I can think of.
Good luck! Keep us posted if you discover what happened.
Ah Wendy. Such is life with chickens. The mysteries just keep coming. I too have had one or two toes go missing in the coop. Most likely what you’re seeing is a chicken that is being picked on. This can be for many reasons. I see that your’s has feathered feet and this often leads to some witchy hen pecking at another hens feet while roosting. Those feathers are often way too interesting to a coop mate or in order for one hen to move another off a perch they will peck at their feet to get them to move over. I’ve seen them peck at the feet moving the pecked hen over until she runs out of perch and has to jump off or onto another perch. Unfortunately if blood has been drawn the others will not leave her alone. Feet can bleed quite a bit but not for long so I suspect something like that has happened in your coop and you just didn’t see it. You can see my experience with the same problem here.
http://welcometothehenhouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/squeaky-chick-gets-treat.html
Most likely it will happen again but a little Epsom salts foot soak and some ointment or spray should do the trick.
I’ve built 3 coops during my lifetime and one of the things that is HIGH priority is making them so there is no danger to the girls’ feet.
Since this is the second time it has happened, I’d look very carefully at all the areas your girls inhabit.
I see you are going to check out everything very carefully.
I would suggest you carefully check out every nook and cranny, every place where your girls roost, jump to, every trouble spot they might fly into or run into if chased and look at it from the perspective of “what could possibly go wrong if their feet got caught.”
Odds are the chicken who had her webbed toes separated might have been prone to such an accident. If you don’t find the toe, odds are someone ate it.
I’ve been keeping chickens since 1972 and this is one of the things I hope to never see. Sorry it happened to your flock.
I’ve built 3 coops during my lifetime and one of the things that is HIGH priority is making them so there is no danger to the girls’ feet.
Since this is the second time it has happened, I’d look very carefully at all the areas your girls inhabit.
I see you are going to check out everything very carefully.
I would suggest you carefully check out every nook and cranny, every place where your girls roost, jump to, every trouble spot they might fly into or run into if chased and look at it from the perspective of “what could possibly go wrong if their feet got caught.”
Odds are the chicken who had her webbed toes separated might have been prone to such an accident. If you don’t find the toe, odds are someone ate it.
I’ve been keeping chickens since 1972 and this is one of the things I hope to never see. Sorry it happened to your flock.
Sometimes in winter a chicken will get frostbite and the affected area will drop off.