Rooster not using one leg

[lfili8]

I have a flock of about 18 chickens, and two of them are roosters. My favourite rooster in the past month or so has developed a strange limp. At first he just was favouring one leg, then it started getting a little bit more severe, and now he will hop around on the one leg, and when the other one is supposed to go forward to take a step, he will kick it out behind him quite severely and it looks very odd. Wondering if anybody has ever seen this before? He has no other symptoms of anything, his foot and leg anatomy look and feel normal.

 

[featherhead007]

My roo always stands on 0ne leg or the other, no physical problems with him, but I have a rule for my flock.... Birds, you have two legs, so lower that foot
to the ground right now!! I say that to them a lot

 

[Eggcessive]

How old is your rooster? Injury to the leg or hip is usually the first thing to rule out. That can take weeks to heal or it may never heal. An xray if a vet is available could rule out a broken bone, but a sprain can be possible. Limiting his activity might help. Mareks disease also comes to mind, especially if the affected leg seems numb or paralyzed. Have you added any new birds to the flock recently?

 

[micstrachan]

+1 for what Eggcessive said. Injury or Merek’s would be my guesses. I have a pullet who had a limp for weeks. I had to limit her activity for her to heal. The kicking the leg out thing would concern me about Marek’s, but sounds like this has been going on for several weeks? I still don’t have a feel for how swiftly Marek’s can take a bird down, but I think some birds can survive it. So sorry. I’m really no help here. Just babbling about things I’ve read on here but really have no real knowledge in Marek’s just yet. I hope it’s just a sprain that some rest will fix!

 

[lfili8]

He hatched this spring, so he's not very old at all. And it has been at least a month since I noticed his hopping. The last time I got any birds was in the summer, not recently at all and haven't noticed anything else out of the ordinary, other than a couple of my chickens were sneezing so I put them on antibiotics for a week and it cleared right up. Not sure if that helps at all?