2 week old chick with turned in toes?? Please help!

[madgabmomma]

I have 17 2 week old chicks in the brooder right now that I have been raising since day one. Today I noticed one of the little cochin chicks was walking funny. When I picked it up it's toes on both feet are curled under sort of. Anybody know what this is? They were in the house in cardboard box brooders with hay and paper towels on top for the first 4 days and then I moved them too the outside brooder which has wood floors with pine shavings. None of the other chicks seem to be having this problem and I observe them everyday multiple times and today is the first time I've noticed this. Can it be fixed? Is it some sort of disease or am I doing something wrong? Thanks!

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

Is it his back toes that curl forward?


I have an older cockerel who's rear toes are bent forward like the three front toes on each foot. He seems to get around ok.



Can you move the curled toes into the correct position?

 

[Gypsy07]

If the rest of them are fine and you're providing suitable nutrition then it's not something you're doing. Most likely the chick would have turned out like that whatever you did. As it's still only a couple of weeks old you might be able to get the toes straightened out. People on here have various methods for fixing up wonky chickies, so have a search for curled toes in the google custom search box on the upper right of your screen and see what pops up. Some people cut out a little flat cardboard 'shoe' and tape the chick's toes to it, some bend pipecleaners to the required shape and tape the toes that way. I've never had to do it so I won't offer any more advice, but I'm sure you'll find the info you want on here somewhere...

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

Quote:
Actually, you will get better results using BYC search. It is found in the blue bar just above your logged in name (Search). It will give you a very detailed search engine.

 

[Gypsy07]

Haha. Same thing. The Google custom search box only searches BYC, so the search results will be the same.
Well, unless the two search functions pop up the results in different orders maybe...

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

Quote:
It is different. With BYC search, you can search specific forums - or authors.......or for phrases in a post - it is a very comprehensive search.


You should try it some time - you will love it! Anything you can think of that you want to read about - type in "turned in toes" and you get 19 pages of reading