I am currently babysitting a recent-amputee peacock for a friend who is out of town. His breeder did not take the proper precautions of installing wide enough perches for winter roosting, and predictably this boy got such severe frostbite on both feet that most of all of his toes turned necrotic, and eventually (this last week) fell off.
Losing toes to frostbite like this is extremely painful. And yet most fowl owners will shrug and inform you that the bird will "get around fine" after the toes (or even the whole foot) fall off. They do not give the birds any painkillers, no meds for circulation (which could potentially save more of the foot/toes), no antibiotics (despite that the bird is facing a major amputation that includes bones, wounds that could easily lead to bone infection or sepsis), nothing. They don't keep the wounds particularly clean usually, either; the bird is lucky if it even gets separated for any care at all. And this poor guy was unfortunately no exception.
Thankfully, his breeder surrendered him free to a friend of mine, who got him to my vet and got plenty of care for him. However, he's facing not just the frostbite, but injuries to his head and neck from the other birds picking on him for moving funny, and severe malnutrition from not having gotten enough to eat (it's hard to want to eat when you're in staggering amounts of pain and it's hard to move to go to the food).
He arrived here Sunday, and even though it's been a month, he didn't feel significantly more filled in than he'd been when I first picked him up. He also absolutely reeked. Like, I know peafowl poo isn't a fantastic smell but this was so much worse. Since he was staying inside at my house, it stank up the whole house badly enough even I could smell it.
So Monday morning, I gave him a bath. He's been in pain and having a hard time walking, so instead he's just been kind of laying in it when he poops or passes urates. His belly was caked. It turned the bathwater brown. But, I got him cleaned up as much as could, while using this bath as a chance to soak the foot wounds. Because when he came out, we had a little debriding session with his most recently amputated foot, where I cut away 1/2" portions of even thicker scabs caked in mud and ??? that also reeked. I sanitized the wounds, applied the silver sulfadiazine cream she's given me for it, and wrapped it up gently (and without the weird donut thing she wrapped into his dressing).
He slept VERY soundly on a heat pad for a while after that, but once he was up he seemed a lot more comfy putting a little bit of weight on the bandaged foot..
He's also getting meds tubed to his crop, along with liquid feed. Every morning, I make him a scrambled peafowl egg, and every morning he wolfs it down like he's never had food before in his life. Today, for the first time since Sunday (so 3 days ago at this point), he started having solid poop again. Tonight, he was chowing down on feed all by himself before I did evening meds.
So, I'm hoping for a speedy or at least good recovery for him.
Here he is honking at me because I gave him a foot bath because he did a massive poop and then immediately stepped in it. So fun.
