3 week old chick not putting weight on one leg... Please help!

[jaymehale]

We bought 5 red star chicks online. They hatched on 10/15 and were here the next day. They have all been perfectly fine. Yesterday, we noticed that our largest of the chicks was trying to (what looked like) stretch out one leg. She seemed to be pretty sleepy and looked like she was sunbathing like our older hens do. However, today we noticed she isn't putting any weight on that same leg. There is no visible injuries, no blood, no puss, doesn't look like anything is broken, nothing looks swollen. When she is laying down, her good leg is underneath her and the bad leg is kind of in front of her. The leg is straight though. The toes on her bad leg seem to "bundle up" a little bit more. She can splay them when she puts her leg down, but when she is keeping weight off of it (most of the time) the toes seem to overlap each other. Maybe a joint issue? Any ideas?

BTW- we have two older, laying hens that are housed seperately. We just got them a couple months ago. Then we bought these baby chicks so that each of our kids could have one of their own. So we are VERY new to chicken owning. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!!

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I'd want to rule out curly toe paralysis and slipped achilles tendon.

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/publications/6/diseases-of-poultry/217/vitamin-b2-deficiency

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/206930.htm


If it were me, I'd buy a poultry vitamin pack from the feed store to put in the water. Make sure you are feeding a chick starter for them, not scratch. Also, if your chick feed is old, I'd buy some new.

Here is a nice page: please scroll down to slipped achilles tendon treatment (vital to do early)
https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-podiatry

Also, milk products are high in riboflavin.