Broken beak

[utefan_42]

I was just out giving my 13 week old pulletts some snacks, and I noticed that one of them has a broken beak. It looks like the first 1/4 of an inch has just snapped of her top beak. Is this something I need to be worried about?

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

It will grow back

My roo tried to attack a hardware cloth fence and broke his beak off very close to his nose actually and it's already grown back. took about a month.

 

[Judy]

There was a thread on here recently about injured beaks. Are you using a metal feeder?

 

[utefan_42]

No, I don't use a metal feeder. I do have chain link around my run so maybe she hit that. There isn't any blodd, so i don't think it broke beyond the quick. It should just grow back like a fingernail right?

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

Yes it will. And mine actually bleed and it still grew back. There was blood splashed all over the walls! I thought there was a massacre in there when I opened the door. By that time it had dried up but he was ok and it grew back just fine. Yours will prob grew back even sooner then a month if it didn't even bleed.

 

[ChickenCharmer]

I have an OEG rooster, Remus, who got some serious beak injuries during a raccoon attack. My flock is free-range and is locked up in a solid wood barn at night. A raccoon got in through a 1 1/2 inch slit one night and devastated the entire flock.

I found poor Remus in the morning with a swollen face, a gash on his head that showed his skull, his top mandible shattered, his lower mandible split, his face, throat, and neck covered in blood, and he was coughing up blood and blood clogged the inside of his throat. I knew he was a gonner for sure. I figured he was sitting on the bar when the raccoon clawed open his skull, and in his terror Remus flew off the perch and dashed his poor beak against the wooden walls.

So I wrapped him in towels and tried to dab up all the blood that he kept choking up. After a while I fed him sugar water through a syringe, but it made his mouth all sticky and even more difficult to breathe. Somehow, he survived, but his beak was so sensitive I had to feed him myself for weeks. His lower beak was split down the middle and I doubted it would ever heal and that Remus would ever be able to eat by himself again.

I kept him in a cage, with a broody hen for company (who had to sit in a cage anyway) and I noticed him very gingerly picking at some food. I put him out with the rest of the flock in the evening to see if he could eat by himself and at night I felt his crop and it was full of food! He could eat by himself!

He is still here today, and can eat himself, but his beak is still in two and I doubt it will ever heal. Here is Remus, after he was able to eat by himself. You can see his face and beak looks a little weird. (Sorry I don't have a picture of his actual beak, but if you want, I can try to take one)

And this is Remus today: