am i crazy for trying to save this turkey??

[muddymomma]

i think I already know the answer, but I'm hoping someone has a suggestion so I don't have to eat my buddy! we've only had turkeys a couple months. one of my burbon red girls disappeared, about 5 days later a neighbor knocks on the door saying he found one, was I missing one? when I got to her she'd obviously been sitting there the whole time with 2 broken legs. I took her home thinking 'no way can I save this bird' but she ate and drank and seemed to have a lot of fight left in her so what the heck I tried. both legs have compound fractures with the bone sticking through. one was so bad the leg was at a 90* angle. the other wasn't that noticeable till I looked closely. so I straightened and splinted them and fashioned her a sling to keep the weight off of them. it's been a couple weeks, her feet have been warm so there is blood flow. she's moving her legs, but when I unwrapped them the worse one is still obviously not healed. it's floppy and starting to look a bit shriveled. the other one seems to be ok. she's flexing her foot and it looks pretty good. i'm wondering if a turkey can live with one leg?? I can take it off, or leave it and just see what happens to it. i just looked at it and its definitely not healed at all. bone still sticking out and i can wiggle it around. I don't mind doing the work to rehabilitate her. but i'd like her to be able to reproduce and live as normal a life as possible. I kind of like the girl, she's pretty spunky and has a lot of life in her. plus my 4yo is getting pretty attached. if I can save her i'd like to try but i'm afraid she'll be ending up in the freezer. any thoughts? she's around 2yrs old if that makes a difference...

 

[sourland]

Birds can live quite well with one leg. She may require extra care as she will be vulnerable to predators and aggressive flockmates. If the one leg heals, it may become necessary at some time in the future to 'remove' the non functional leg. Good luck.

 

[muddymomma]

so I should just leave the bad leg and see what happens? it's definitely not going to knit together. the bone coming from the foot is sticking out to the side and scabbed over, it's only attached by the flesh of the leg and wiggles freely. my plan is to make sure the other leg is healed well then lower her sling so she can put a little weight on it. she's been picking at her legs, the bad leg bled a little onto the paper below. both have pale areas where she's pulling off the scales (whatever it's called) on her legs.

 

[sourland]

Personally, if I felt that there was no chance of the bad leg healing, I would remove it. Others are more squeamish than me.

 

[muddymomma]

I'm not very squeamish, I can do it if I have to. not going to like it but I'm thinking it's the best thing to do. I might give it a few days just to make sure (mainly to build my courage lol). my main concern is that she be able to live a somewhat normal life. I know it'll be a long road to recovery and if I go to all that trouble I'm not sure I could put her down after that. a pet turkey, I never imagined we'd end up with a pet turkey lol.

 

[Egg Yolk]

Yeah just remove that leg. I had a chicken with one leg (i hatched her and 1 leg was lame) she lives for about 1 month and a half because she had neurological problems but she walked just as good as the other chicks!

 

[muddymomma]

ok I guess that's the plan then. ugh, not looking forward to this...