How to Treat a Broken Duck Claw

Look at that poor face!

Sometimes our ducks hurt themselves. Sao-Ree Dactyl, a muscovy drake that I rescued from becoming food, likes to get out of his nighttime stall and follow me around as I do last minute chores before tucking everyone in for bed. The trouble is that the other flocks are afraid of him and Freddie my gander will pick a fight with him, so I contain Sao-Ree in his stall while I put the others to bed. Somehow Sao-Ree managed to catch his left-foot dewclaw on something and rip it off, leaving drops of the reddest blood everywhere. If you have seen muscovy blood, you know what I mean. In this blog I will tell you how to treat an injured foot--in this case, a ripped toenail that was painful and exposed to the quick. Sao-Ree was limping when I first noticed. After I bandaged his foot, however, he no longer limped as you can see in the video at the end of this post.

Here I've laid out several pieces of duct tape and a vet wrap in preparation for treating
Sao-Ree's toenail injury.

 Step One: Gather Materials

1. For this procedure, several items are needed, such as a pair of bandage scissors that have a safety tip on the end to prevent accidentally cutting your duck's feet.
2. Vet wrap bandages, which you can get at your local feed store.
3. Gauze pads, cut to size for whatever kind of injury you are treating.
4. Wound solution such as a triple antibiotic spray, first aid spray, or Vetericyn Plus, because you want to spray the wound clean and then I usually rub a little antibiotic ointment on it right before wrapping a piece of gauze on the wound.
5. Duct tape.
6. A towel.
7. A friend who can hold your duck for you while you apply the treatment.

You can see in this photo that Sao-Ree has ripped his entire dewclaw off leaving only the bloody quick,
which is painful. That's why he limped.

Sao-Ree's bloody dewclaw.

I have placed a towel on my lap, wrapped partially around Sao-Ree so that he cannot extend his wings
and hit me in the face. It's best if you have help, someone who can hold your duck. With his head tucked
beneath my armpit, I stretched his leg back, just as he would do naturally while stretching. 

 Step Two: Prepare Your Duck

1. Make sure you are comfortable. I sat on the ground.
2. The duck or goose must be secured so that he or she does not injure himself or you. This is why it's best to have a friend to help you by holding the duck in a position that allows you to access the foot.
3. Place a large towel in your lap or the lap of the person who will hold the duck.
4. Position the duck in your lap on his tummy the way he would lie down naturally in the grass.
5. Wrap the towel around his body so that he cannot flap his wings or wiggle away, and tuck the sides, but make sure that the injured foot is bent back so that you can access it. Think of how ducks stretch their legs backwards and gently position the leg behind him in this way so that you can see the bottom of his foot.
6. When you bandage the foot, make sure the toes are spread and the foot is in the position it would be in if he were standing with his foot flat on the ground. You don't want the foot bunched up so that he has trouble walking.
7. Place the gauze pad where you need it, but be careful not to bunch it up or leave lumps that are difficult for him to walk on. In Sao-Ree's case I merely cut a piece of gauze and wrapped it around his dewclaw and put a flat piece beneath the pad of his foot for cushion between his foot and the vet wrap.
8. Once you have the gauze in place and are holding the foot so it is flattened, carefully wrap the vet wrap around the foot. The vet wrap will adhere to some extent to itself and makes a great bandage material for duck feet. If you are wrapping a foot that is not injured on the dewclaw, then cut a hole in the vet wrap to make room for the dewclaw to protrude freely.
9. After wrapping the foot in vet wrap, next apply short pieces, maybe three to four inches long, of duct tape, still keeping the duck's foot spread.
10. Since Sao-Ree has long claws and it was his dewclaw that sustained injury, I was trying to keep his foot wrapped for a day or two in order to give the claw time to dry out and for the antibiotics to protect the injury from infection. If you have a different type of foot injury, you may want a more waterproof method, such as wrapping beyond the toenails so water cannot get inside the foot bandage.

Vet wrap is versatile and can be molded, to some extent, and cut to allow comfort.

Duct tape works great as a waterproofing material in a pinch and as the last layer of bandaging when
dressing a foot wound on a duck or goose.

Sao-Ree's head is tucked under my armpit. In this instance I was on my own and needed to make sure I held him securely
or I'd have to start all over again if the tape bunched up from his squirming.

The final product: a temporary, three layer bandage to protect a torn dewclaw for a couple of days while it heals.

Ouch!

 And in the end, after being wrapped in a towel and bandaged, Sao-Ree struts off without even limping. He wore the bandage for two days and by then he had been tearing at it a bit so it was quite frayed. I removed the bandage and he went on with his important life as Head Muscovy Drake at the Duck House.