Spraddle leg Chick, Help

shirley23942

Hatching
Sep 8, 2015
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0
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Hi All,

We have had our first incubator hatch and are extremely new to this. The baby chick ( a blue Andalusian) was born yesterday at 12:00PM with spraddle leg. It took us until today to figure it out and we have made it a brace, which seems to be helping. However, it cannot eat or drink on its own and I do not want to move it to the brooder box. However, I hear it is bad to leave it in the incubator too long. None of the other eggs have hatched yet. What should I do?

Side note: Our first attempt at incubating eggs, the power went out for 3 days and we lost 12 baby chicks that were ready to hatch. This hatch, the power went out for the majority of 1 day and we are hopeful to see more hatching, but they are already a week late. My goal is to keep this baby healthy and alive, while learning how to do that. Any ideas are much appreciated!

Thank you!
 
The brace is a great first step towards your chicks health. I would also reccomend removing the brace once a day and doing physical therapy. Thus is just moving the legs around simulating walking for the legs. This will help strengthen the muscles for when the chicks legs are strait and ready to walk. We want to keep those legs strong! As for the incubator, I think you should create a mini Broider bin for the chick and monitor It closely.hand feed the chucks and give water with a dropper in the beak. Provide food and water in the brooder just in case. Good luck!
 
Hi Chloechicks,

Thank you for your response. I read it the day you posted, but have not had a chance to respond until now. We used a Band-Aid brace on her legs and worked with her on movement. This was improving, but she was still not walking properly. However, she did hop well when the Band-Aid was on so we called her Hop Along. I was giving her water and she was eating oats regularly, but not the chicken feed. However, I guess it just wasn't enough because Saturday morning we came in to find her dead. It broke my heart. I am glad to have gotten the chance to learn as much as I did with her.

On the plus side, Saturday night we had another egg pip, and we are awaiting her arrival.

Thank you again for your help!

Shirley
 

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