2 week old baby chick legs straight out in front

[tizzy9]

Hi,

I am fairly new to keeping chickens and have a 2 week old baby chick who is struggling to stand and is keeping her legs and feet straight out in front mostly staying back on her rear but still able to generally move around somehow. All of the pictures of spraddle leg I have seen have the legs out to the sides and talk about it happening the first few days after hatch; not after two weeks. The chicks were kept on a shelf liner for traction the first couple days and are now in pine shavings. They were vaccinated for Mareks and Coccidiosis and are being fed an organic chicken starter and have water with the quick chick vitamins still being added. A couple days ago she was like this and after keeping a close eye on the chicks I couldn't figure out which one she was so I thought maybe she had just slightly injured herself basically playing as no injury could be found; but as of last night she is doing it again and has not improved. Any feedback on what could be wrong or what I should try to do would be appreciated. All the other chicks seem happy and healthy; when we went to separate her last night she became very stressed and since the others don't seem to be picking on her we let her rejoin them for now as I figured additional stress wouldn't be helpful either. Thanks in advance!

 

[Eggcessive]

Welcome to BYC. You might try a chick chair for her to learn how to stand upright. Here is a link for you about leg problems: https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-podiatry

 

[tizzy9]

Thanks! I will try to put something like that together and I'm going to try and get a hold of Nutridrench as well. Any idea what could have caused it or why it happened? I would like to avoid it happening again if it is something I can influence.

 

[Eggcessive]

Thanks! I will try to put something like that together and I'm going to try and get a hold of Nutridrench as well. Any idea what could have caused it or why it happened? I would like to avoid it happening again if it is something I can influence.

If I were you, I would get another brand of poultry vitamins. Nutri-Drench is good except that it does not contain riboflavin (vitamin B2) which is sometime a cause of deficiency affecting the legs. Poultry Cell by Rooster Booster has it, as doses most of the dry vitamins that are added to water.

 

[Romochickencrazy]

Just interested to hear how things turned out for your hen. I have an 8 month old rooster who started to do this same thing holding his leg out in front of him and limping. Did your hen improve?