Chicken has little or no balance

[ludicrous]

Hello fellow chicken lovers!

Me and my family have been raising pet chickens for a while now (5-6 years) and our chickens have been healthy and problem free all or those years, but one of our new chickens has been showing some strange behaviors lately...

He is a Plymouth rock rooster and he is about 12 to 15 weeks old, and has always been a bit smaller than the other Plymouth rock's. He had been walking strangely, almost limping around the coop but we thought he had just injured his leg somehow. The next day we found him lying down on the ground, I tried to put him on his feet but he fell over again. Its almost like he is very drunk. Here is a video of how he acts:
link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6kaIGTKenk

the strangest part is that he can almost walk normally in the early morning, but an hour later he back to flopping.

Here are some pictures (I noticed some red on his leg):

he seems to eat fine and make normal noises but he is losing weight. I have looked into Marek's disease but he doesn't really fit the description. He does have access to a compost pile so it could be mold poisoning but he has been like this for 5 days now.

Please help me help him, his name is Bruce and he is very friendly

 

[ranchhand]

Sorry your boy is having problems, and I hope I am wrong. I would definately close off the compost to all chickens.

I had a roo who had very similar problems. Turns out he was the smallest and couldn't get as much feed, so he found a crevice of moldy food under the coop and ate that. It caused permanant neurological damage and he was euthanized by my vet, after 2 weeks inside with no improvement.

The reddened leg could be indicative of an injury or circulation issues. Perhaps there is an avian vet who would take a look?

Good luck, I hope it works out okay.

 

[ludicrous]

Quote:
thank you, I will definitely close off the compost from the chickens, I have been keeping him separate from the other chickens for a while, I hope it isn't permanent :O