From Blackland Prairie Raptor Center
Springtime means people are using fertilizers on lawns and flower beds. Fertilizers, whether synthetic or organic, contain many chemicals that can be harmful. Please be mindful of fertilizers and the damage it can do to skin. If you use fertilizers, please water the fertilizer into the ground. This method creates a beautiful and safe yard.
Springtime also means baby birds and fledglings often spend a few days walking and standing on the ground. If a bird stands on fertilizer it burns the bird's feet and hocks, often resulting in sores so severe that the birds are no longer able to walk. Birds with the worst burns are absolutely devastating as these can burn down to the bone.
We don't like to take young birds away from their parents, but fertilizer-burned feet need medical attention. This Eastern Screech Owl came to our raptor clinic with burns on its feet. Our clinic staff cleaned the wounds and applied topical medication. Then the feet are wrapped to help the wounds heal and will be rechecked and rewrapped over several days. The owl will wear medicated booties until these burns heal.
Do the chemicals themselves cause burns? Like they’re essentially a skin irritant? I never knew this about fertilizer. I’ve always watered it down really well after laying any.
Yes, fertilizers can be a skin irritant due to the concentration of chemicals. Obviously it depends on the fertilizer; most likely this owl stepped in a water-soluble chemical fertilizer, as they tend to be quite concentrated and are placed on top of the soil so they can dissolve a little bit every time the plant is watered.
Unfortunately people often dump more on the soil than plants really need (the ol’ ‘if one application is good than twice as much is twice as good!’ crowd that also drives doctors crazy). At usual application rates and spread the fertilizer should, in most cases, be too spread out to be much of a problem, but obviously a giant pile of it…
I tried for a while to find you a good answer, but I couldn't really come up with one. Most article seem to talk about animals eating it, not standing in it. I found a few other things basically saying to water it after applying like this did, but none explained what that did.
With so many different fertilizers, and with some just being fertilizers while others can have weed killers, insecticides, etc added, it was difficult to pinpoint specific chemicals being the danger. They all likely have nitrated and ammonia salts, both of which I saw skin contact warnings for in the SDS sheets, but they only seem to look at effects on humans.
I was trying to see if the salts would react with moisture on the birds' feet and cause a thermal reaction or if it would form nitric acid, which is highly corrosive, but any animal related articles didn't go into that much detail, and I don't know enough chemistry to look it up by going that route. It's not like these products are uncommon, so it's disappointing not to find this info, especially as I imagine the same burns could happen to people's pets' feet.
I've manipulated many kinds of fertilisers with bare hands over the years and never had any problems beyond a mild irritation. I remember that ammonium nitrate got cold in contact with water so I see it causing some burns, but it is heavily controlled nowadays (at least in Spain).
Those burns look so severe that make me think of quicklime or some other form of calcium oxide.
I was confused as well, being how many landscapers are subject to prolonged exposure for example. Even looking at some of the basic components in the SDS sheet didnt make much of it sound like much of a concern. But with a plethora of formulations, it may just be something in one specific less-often used material, or it could just be this is a baby animal that is having direct contact for extended time and has no means to wash it off.
Our neighborhood gets occasionally seeded with some kind of treatment product that they ride around and spread these little pellets. I would get so paranoid when I had dogs because I didn't know what it was, and they were both Basset hounds, so their big feet, belly, nose, and ears were always dragging through it.
Thanks for posting and the follow up research. How interesting to see this PSA, without much information available elsewhere. I recognize it’s niche but it’s such a sad thing I’m surprised it hasn’t been discussed. Maybe sad but quite rare.
I'm pretty puzzled right now. I remember I have posted about this before, so I went back and looked and I had posted on this a year and 2 years ago, but both are from this same clinic. Google also showed me another post from them from 5 years ago for this, but again, still just them.
They're all different photos, but it's so strange it's only this place. They all look truly burned, but they're all baby Screeches, all too young to fly, so it's not like they went off somewhere else after they got burned. That should make it easier to determine what burned them, I'd think.
So I went to their post and asked if they had any more info because I couldn't find anything anywhere else, which seems odd given how this isn't some regulated or rare product. I will update if I hear anything, and I will try and remember to ask next weekend if our clinic has had anything like this before.
This story seemed pretty straightforward, but now I'm perplexed... 🤔
Only thing I can think of is like a "home remedy" for treating something like poison ivy.
Edit: humans also make keratin in our nails. You'd have to find a fertilizer or other treatment that eats our keratin as you mentioned in another comment where it's the keratin on the feet that is damaged.
It did seem a bit odd since I couldn't find mention of it anywhere else. Never heard back from this rescue on my inquiry. I did remember to ask one of the rehabbers at my place, and she said they're definitely burns, but she hadn't seen anything like this before. Her suspicion was also some weird ingredient maybe that is available in Texas. We both agreed that it seemed like anything this caustic or exothermic seemed an odd thing to put on grass, as we thought it would burn that as well. So it seems it will remain a mystery for now. At least little birdy got treatment.
Apparently no one on the Internet has ever complained about their backyard chicken getting a fertilizer burn? Results are about chicken manure burning plants. Also about treating the feet of chickens with traditional burns from high temperature.
There’s more to this story perhaps! Thanks for asking them.
(got me thinking about soil type, fertilizer concentration/strength/type, certain bird species with weaker or stronger foot skin… heck even some remote possibility of confusion on behalf of someone along the chain heh)
I actually searched for burns on dogs first, as I figured that would be more common, but nothing there, and then just birds in general because all fledglings would be on the ground for a while. It was all about chemicals burning the dang grass.
Then I wondered if they were actually heat burns from the birds jumping on hot metal or pavement maybe since they are in Texas, but again, I think they'd be able to figure that out.
Hopefully I hear from them. I tried hard not to sound accusatory or anything, I was basically like you guys are the only ones mentioning it, so do you have more info on what exactly burns them.
Maybe a lack of lawn care education in their particular area somehow… maybe the use of aggressive weed killers too…
Maybe simply the experts in this niche! Which sounds like less of a longshot