Advice please!
We're currently looking after a 7 day old chick that hatched with a twisted foot. At 2 days old we noticed her foot and tried to make a little splint booty for it which helped her. She has been hopping on her good foot and sometimes using the elbow part of the bad leg to hobble around on. It now looks like that elbow joint is twisted too and she can't really straighten it. She is getting around fine, eating, drinking and seems generally quite a happy little chick.
She's gotten very attached to me and loves to snuggle up on a scarf in my neck.
A local nursery gets hatching eggs every spring and we looked after the 9 chicks over the weekend. Our poorly girl was getting picked on a little by the other chicks so we've kept her at home whilst the others are back at the nursery this week.
We were planning to keep 3 chicks, the rest are due to go back to the farm on Friday.
My question is, is it cruel to keep her? The farmer will be putting her to sleep on Friday if she goes back as he said she won't have any quality of life and it wouldn't be fair to keep her alive in pain.
She doesn't seem to be in pain but i wouldn't want her to struggle as she gets bigger.
What should we do?
We're currently looking after a 7 day old chick that hatched with a twisted foot. At 2 days old we noticed her foot and tried to make a little splint booty for it which helped her. She has been hopping on her good foot and sometimes using the elbow part of the bad leg to hobble around on. It now looks like that elbow joint is twisted too and she can't really straighten it. She is getting around fine, eating, drinking and seems generally quite a happy little chick.
She's gotten very attached to me and loves to snuggle up on a scarf in my neck.
A local nursery gets hatching eggs every spring and we looked after the 9 chicks over the weekend. Our poorly girl was getting picked on a little by the other chicks so we've kept her at home whilst the others are back at the nursery this week.
We were planning to keep 3 chicks, the rest are due to go back to the farm on Friday.
My question is, is it cruel to keep her? The farmer will be putting her to sleep on Friday if she goes back as he said she won't have any quality of life and it wouldn't be fair to keep her alive in pain.
She doesn't seem to be in pain but i wouldn't want her to struggle as she gets bigger.
What should we do?
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