6 week old chicken cannot walk

[Deanna MacPherson]

Hi everyone! I have a 6 week old silver laced Wyandotte, she was always the smallest of my girls and also didnt progess like the others. The other girls were jumping around and flying and she seemed a bit behind. She started out walking fine but then her one leg started to turn outwards at about 4 weeks. She seemed to struggle at first and then getting stronger and then suddenly not walking at all and struggling to move even. I took her out of the coop to avoid the other girls walking on her and her getting bullied. We can't see any noticeable breaks. There is not much toe action on that foot. Watching her by herself now she seems to want to walk and is pushing herself around. We tried to hold her up and pull her legs together with gauze to see if she could stand and maybe correct her leg but we didn't have much success yet. She is of course very off balance. I have seen the articles about splayed legs , Im unsure what to do at this point as she is so off balance and that seems to be correctable only when they're very little and young. Im really at a loss of what to do. Is there anything I can do to correct this to help her walk again? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[coach723]

PIctures might help. It sounds as if she may have had a slipped tendon that progressed to a rotated leg. If it's rotated then likely only surgery would fix it and that would not be a for sure thing. Here is some info that might help, you can also search for images to compare with your bird.
Scroll to "Fix slipped achilles tendon in hock joint":
https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-podiatry