Do not repeat this at home. Yes, really.
Thursday night, after finishing a corporate night audit (because why not audit in the dark), my husband came back from his IT security kingdom, my son dragged himself home from a full day of engineering lectures, and what did we do as a family? Dinner? Netflix? No. We performed surgery. On a chicken. For bumblefoot.
It was our third surgery. Responsibilities now divided with military precision, and—believe it or not—it went way smoother than the first two. Apparently, even in poultry medicine, practice makes perfect. And yes, we are collecting data.
But here’s the real rant: I am deeply disappointed in how little structured data or process documentation exists in homesteading or small farming.
How do we learn? How do we improve? If all we do is copy-paste steps from random internet posts without knowing why the original author even did it that way, we are stuck reinventing the wheel (a very sharp, chicken-foot–puncturing wheel).
Take bumblefoot—30% of poultry will face it. And the “solutions” are basically four roads to Rome:
- Dispose of the bird. Easy, quick, but unfair. The root cause lies in our mistakes—bad surfaces, sharp edges, rough bedding. It’s wasteful too, since staph infection means you can’t even eat the meat. I’d keep this only as a last resort if it will be more humane than other ways.
- Most popular method: homeopathic balms and Epsom salt spa day. Nice aromatherapy, but doesn’t fix the infected foot. More like a “I-love-my-birds” denial pathway. Tried that - not working, plus a lot of my time and a lot of chicken’s confusion and stress.
- Surgery. Isolate, recover, investigate the real causes. My personal choice.
- Vet visit. Which often leads right back to options 1–3, but with added stress for the bird (and your wallet) and extend the waiting time to resolve for 1-2 week.
I go with #3. But here’s the gap:
- First, even videos and veterinary papers were inconsistent, undocumented, and basically experimental theater. No step-by-step description. No focus on preserving foot function. No sign of pain management or timing protocols (that is the very legal requirement, btw)
- Second, zero aftercare data. Did the bird survive? Recover? Walk normally again? What about wound treatment, antibiotics, or resistance risks? Nothing.
- Third, no root cause analysis. Did anyone check sharp edges, overweight birds, alkaline bedding, excess ammonia, overheated stones? Did they actually fix those and track whether cases decreased?
So yes—the only way to improve is to make records like in human-grade research medicine: surgery notes, recovery logs, observation sheets, bandage changes, suture removals. That, and only that, guarantees next time will be better. Not perfect, but definitely better and more understandable- Why?
By the way—our patient was calm, sleeping in a side postural position (which is kinda hypnotic for chickens) with heavy topical lidocaine. She felt important and relaxed (I was tracking her heart rate). Two birds before her recovered quickly and even seemed more bonded to us afterwards. This one is eating well, healing, sulking in temporary isolation (furious about it), and her perfect eggs (the sign of good health) are discarded just in case.
And honestly? Imagine if enterprises ran risk management the same way as small farms: inconsistent instructions, no aftercare, no root cause analysis. We’d all be in crisis mode, guessing, and calling mixed forum advice - “best practice.” At least my chickens deserve better.
And here’s the thought that keeps circling in my head: if a simple log of chicken surgeries can show us how to do better, imagine what data could do for a small farm, a side business, or even a household with three pets constantly inventing new chaos. Collecting and looking at your own numbers isn’t rocket science—it’s pattern spotting, saving resources, and making tomorrow easier than today. I’m putting together a workshop to show just how simple (and surprisingly fun) this can be.
