Joey Boy is still lame. Normally by this stage of being poulticed he would be a lot better by now but it looks like this abscess is worse than the ones he usually gets and rather than it draining through the hole that the farrier made in the sole of his foot it looks like it is going to burst out through the area where his hoof meets his leg. Yuck! I had the vet out today to look at him and the other old donkey that I foster who has an abscess under his jaw.
The vet recommended that I 'tub' his foot in a bowl of hot water with Epsom Salts for 15 minutes twice a day and then poultice again. When I told the vet that I was going to use an old wellington boot to put the water and salts in she laughed....... I can't imagine why, it worked really well!
Joey Boy is one of the four rescue donkeys that I foster from the donkey sanctuary. He is estimated to be almost 30 years old. Not much is known about his history but the scars on the backs of his legs probably come from him having been hobbled or tangled up in wire in the past.
I was looking for horse shoes in an old bucket at a friend's yard last week while back home briefly for my neice's wedding, and found a couple of donkey boots from when they used donkeys to pull the lawn mower and the boots were to stop their hooves cutting into the lawn! They looked in quite good nick too! That welly made me think of it. Hope he gets better very soon.
