Bad foot.....

[conniesue27]

My scovy drake seems to have injured one of his feet, I'm not a vet, but I think it may be broken. I picked him up and it seems like he can't grip with it. Please don't tell me to put him down or anything else like that. Just want to know if it can heal on its own, or do I need to splint it or something? He can still jump up on the roost, but can't get around so good. I live in northeast ohio and don't really know of any vets in my area that I could take him to. How do you find a vet for farm animals?

 

[BirdBrain]

Connie, are his toes broken, or is the injury in the ankle or leg? I don't know how you would go about splinting a foot, but you could try making a sling that sopports his weight and keeps him mostly off the ground. He would have to have foot and water at his level. If he were put in this sling, he would probably need to be removed from it and put in a pool to swim two or three times a day. I have seen the sling idea used on chickens, but not ducks, still it might work.

 

[conniesue27]

Quote:
Can't really tell if it's foot, toe or ankle just know he seems for be favoring it. Is there a picture of this sling thing? I have a big dog crate that I'm thinking of putting him into just so he gets off that foot for a while and gives it a rest and so the other drakes leave him alone. Got lots of duck drama going on. Looking for 2 more scovy hens. I've got 3 drakes and 1 hen. You can imagine what's been going on! I think this is how the foot got hurt in the first place. Kinda hard to do the pool thing right now. It was 6 degress this morning.

 

[BirdBrain]

I think putting him up in the crate would help. Is it where you can have him in sight of the other ducks? One of my ducks got here foot mostly frozen a couple of days ago. I had to bring her in and give her a bath in the boys tub a couple of times. Then we had her quiet in a crate near the kitchen where she could see and hear all of the activity of the household. In the morning she was much improved and complaining about the egg laying accommodations. She was a hoot. So I took her back out to the coop and she is fairing pretty good. Your guy may just need a few days rest. Of course, it will probably put him at the bottom of the hierarchy, but that can't be helped.

I'll look around for that post with the sling.

Look at post #14. There may be others. You could do a BYC search for "chicken sling" and that might turn up other design ideas.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=311850&p=1

 

[conniesue27]

Thanks for the link...he's already on the bottom of the list...which really suprised me, because he's always been the biggest. But I guess size doesn't matter to a fickle hen!