Help Please! Sick Chick? or Injured Chick? (w/Pictures)

itsren said:

UPDATE on my lil' Brahma...

She spent four days in a chicken chair (nights were spent in a "hospital kennel" - I was afraid to go to sleep while she was in a chair. It gave her time to preen, too). During the day, I had to carry her with me everywhere, literally, even to the bathroom

because if I walked out of the room for a second, she would cry and try to flap her wings, which made the chicken chair sling bounce all over the place. It was like having a newborn baby attached to the hip! At night she was isolated from the other two birds, because they'd go crazy and slam themselves against their brooder if she came near them in her hospital kennel.

After that, she spent 2 days/nights in an isolated hospital kennel in our living room. I had to sit up with her every night until she fell asleep. The kennel was a plastic dog grate sized for a medium sized dog. I filled the base with shredded newspaper and covered the newspaper with quite a few layers of paper towel to keep her from eating the shredded paper. It worked well.

When she started walking a little bit, we allowed her to free-range with the other two for a short time. We watched her very closely. Those next two days, when they weren't free-ranging, we put her hospital kennel inside the enclosure with the other two birds. We also let her hospital kennel face the brooder at night. The other two finally stopped trying to fly into the cage wire of the brooder. They started sleeping down in the corner of the brooder next to her kennel. The third day, during the day, in their outside enclosure, we took the door off the hospital kennel and the other two would climb in with her. They seemed to like that.

She's now walking! Yay! She has a limp, but it's getting less obvious every single day. This morning I saw her flap her wings, fly and land - and it looked like she was OK after landing. She rests a lot, but I'm so excited she's doing well.

She's now living and sleeping with her flock again. Here she is with her flock in their chicken tractor.



Thank you so much to everyone who helped teach me how to care for my injured lil' Brahma.

Without your help, I doubt we would have had the outcome that we did. Thank you!

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sharol said:

Great job. She looks wonderful.

My question is, are you going to still give her access to sand? She seems to want to eat inappropriate non-food items (and that can't be a good thing).

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itsren said:

They no longer have 24/7 access to the sand bin for dust bathing. They get that for about 1 hour each day and that's it. So far, they're pretty good about getting their dust bathing done during the time it is in with them. Plus, they dust bathe in the garden beds when they free-range.

We're also having to rethink what we're going to put on the floor of the run as we get it and the coop built. We were going to put sand in there (we live in a very rainy state and I hoped sand would dry quicker), but now we're not so sure about that. We could use topsoil - but unless we completely cover the run, it will be mud 10 months out of the year. We've spent the last few days talking about what we should do because of the lil' Brahma's tendencies. My other 2 chickens eat very little sand.

She's 7 weeks old today. I'm not sure if the sand-eating habit is because she is so young, or what. We completely limited her access to anything but food, with a little bit of chick grit mixed into the food while she was recovering. They get a very small amount of veggie treats in a suet feeder - too. I'm hoping she's learning that food tastes much better than sand. Now, unless we're watching her closely, she only has access to food/chick grit mix or grass during the day. Her brooder still has pine chips in it, but the brooder is in the garage, and she's no longer in it during the day. When they get put to bed, it's lights out.

Any suggestions for what to do for the floor of the run? The run will be between 42-56 sq. feet depending on what design we end up going with. We're not sure what bedding we'll use in the coop, now, too. I'm a little nervous to keep using pine chips in their sleeping quarters after the coop is built because she'll have all day access to the coop. I'm really hoping she will outgrow this so I don't have to worry about what she's eating so much.

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sharol said:

Who ever thought you would have to deal with a CHICKEN with an eating disorder?????

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