- Jun 1, 2009
- 2
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Hi there,
We recently got 5 baby chicks from a friend of my moms about 19 days ago. The youngest one, Helen Keller, born on the day we got her has always had leg problems since she came out of her shell. Not having much experience with raising chickens we tried to wait it out to see if she got better, but she hasn't. Were using towels as bedding, since we made the mistake of using newspaper at first and 3 of the chicks got spraddle legs, though with the towels they have done much better.
This is what Helens leg was looking like at about 5-6days
About a week ago we looked online for things to help treat her. We started treating for spraddle legs, which was when we treated the others that had it. We were hoping it would treat them all equally. The other chicks got better but she didn't.
We had a shoe on her for a few days since her toes were growing in bent from how she was walking on it and that helped that problem a bit, they sit kinda weird when she stands on them, mostly from the angle of her leg I believe. Her leg was and still is swelling when shes left to walk around on her own. We spent days making a chick chair that would suit her without her jumping out like madman, which has been frustrating for both human and chicken alike. The chair helps the swelling but we cant keep her in it all the time since the only way to do so seems to be holding on to her while shes in it.
I did check her hock to see if the tendon was out multiple times, especially after shes been in the chair, but I see no difference between her injured leg and her good one. So after treating for the Achilles tendon I'm only guessing that maybe that is not the case. We do try to massage it still every now and then just in case.
This is what her hocks look like:
Her leg juts out at an odd angle:
Before the chair:
After the chair:
Last night we tried to tape a sponge around her leg, and then tape the good leg to the sponge wrapped one. The only information we had on this was the paragraph that D.C. Townsend had given as advice at http://www.voy.com/194762/
I dont know if we did it wrong or what but she kicked it off very quickly and was "walking" around with it just taped to the good leg, dragging the sponge. It was then that we noticed that her down might be rubbed off of the underside of her legs?
Basically after spending days and countless hours centered around this chick we have no clue on what we're doing. Some things seem to help here and there but we fear that we might be causing more harm than good.
She had gotten an impacted crop after a day of us trying to give her yogurt and this vitamin supplement we got for birds that gave her diarrhea. The crop started making her choke while she was in her chair after she overate without us seeing until too late so we started giving her papaya, pedialyte and mushy foods (yogurt and scrambled eggs) in small amounts. It's also slowed down the amount of time we keep her in her chair since we dont want her to choke again. As time goes on we're weaning her back to just her normal food. Her poop is looking more and more normal.
Shes full of life and keeps trying to gorge herself when she can. She acts a lot like the other chicks that are 1-4 days older than her. We gave her a mill worm yesterday and she was dancing around with it in a sorta pathetic way chirping really happy before she ate it. She does like to sleep more than the others and walking is hard for her. She basically throws out her leg similar to how shes trying to stand in one of the pictures up there ^ and tries to balance between them, often flapping her wings here and there.
For the most part she doesn't seem to be in pain, just that shes having a hard time walking. We are trying our best to help her so that she can live a fuller life but we just dont know if what we're doing is right. Any advice is so greatly appreciated since we dont have the means to take her to the vet.
Thank you,
meadow
We recently got 5 baby chicks from a friend of my moms about 19 days ago. The youngest one, Helen Keller, born on the day we got her has always had leg problems since she came out of her shell. Not having much experience with raising chickens we tried to wait it out to see if she got better, but she hasn't. Were using towels as bedding, since we made the mistake of using newspaper at first and 3 of the chicks got spraddle legs, though with the towels they have done much better.
This is what Helens leg was looking like at about 5-6days
About a week ago we looked online for things to help treat her. We started treating for spraddle legs, which was when we treated the others that had it. We were hoping it would treat them all equally. The other chicks got better but she didn't.
We had a shoe on her for a few days since her toes were growing in bent from how she was walking on it and that helped that problem a bit, they sit kinda weird when she stands on them, mostly from the angle of her leg I believe. Her leg was and still is swelling when shes left to walk around on her own. We spent days making a chick chair that would suit her without her jumping out like madman, which has been frustrating for both human and chicken alike. The chair helps the swelling but we cant keep her in it all the time since the only way to do so seems to be holding on to her while shes in it.
I did check her hock to see if the tendon was out multiple times, especially after shes been in the chair, but I see no difference between her injured leg and her good one. So after treating for the Achilles tendon I'm only guessing that maybe that is not the case. We do try to massage it still every now and then just in case.
This is what her hocks look like:
Her leg juts out at an odd angle:
Before the chair:
After the chair:
Last night we tried to tape a sponge around her leg, and then tape the good leg to the sponge wrapped one. The only information we had on this was the paragraph that D.C. Townsend had given as advice at http://www.voy.com/194762/
I dont know if we did it wrong or what but she kicked it off very quickly and was "walking" around with it just taped to the good leg, dragging the sponge. It was then that we noticed that her down might be rubbed off of the underside of her legs?
Basically after spending days and countless hours centered around this chick we have no clue on what we're doing. Some things seem to help here and there but we fear that we might be causing more harm than good.
She had gotten an impacted crop after a day of us trying to give her yogurt and this vitamin supplement we got for birds that gave her diarrhea. The crop started making her choke while she was in her chair after she overate without us seeing until too late so we started giving her papaya, pedialyte and mushy foods (yogurt and scrambled eggs) in small amounts. It's also slowed down the amount of time we keep her in her chair since we dont want her to choke again. As time goes on we're weaning her back to just her normal food. Her poop is looking more and more normal.
Shes full of life and keeps trying to gorge herself when she can. She acts a lot like the other chicks that are 1-4 days older than her. We gave her a mill worm yesterday and she was dancing around with it in a sorta pathetic way chirping really happy before she ate it. She does like to sleep more than the others and walking is hard for her. She basically throws out her leg similar to how shes trying to stand in one of the pictures up there ^ and tries to balance between them, often flapping her wings here and there.
For the most part she doesn't seem to be in pain, just that shes having a hard time walking. We are trying our best to help her so that she can live a fuller life but we just dont know if what we're doing is right. Any advice is so greatly appreciated since we dont have the means to take her to the vet.
Thank you,
meadow