Chicken with a bum leg

[4chickenscratch]

Our chicken is 5 weeks old and she had pasty butt during the first couple of days we got her. That is taken care of, but then she had to be fed egg yolk and yogurt alongside with her normal chicken feed for nutrition because she was weak. Her right leg is currently the issue. When she walks, she limps and draws her leg in a semi-circle. Below are the pictures: the first one is how she sits, the second is the form of her leg and foot, the third is how she carries her good leg compared to the bad. All the other chickens (there's 11 of them) are in good health, but this chicken is a week behind in development compared to her sisters.

Does anyone know what's wrong with her leg?
What can we do?
Thanks.

 

[Madmat]

This is a slipped tendon. Usually it is due to lack of traction in the pen or poor diet. Do you have them on nutritionally supplemented chick feed? Good news though, if you catch it early enough, you can slide the tendon back into the hock by straightening the leg out and rolling the Achilles' tendon back to the back side of the hock. But stick with the supplemented feed till they're old enough.

 

[4chickenscratch]

Thank you!

We actually found this link a little later and are following the physical therapy. She seems like she is doing better, but we'll see what happens!

 

[4chickenscratch]

Also, we found the link that's listed above when we searched "Spraddle leg".

Is the tendon thing and spraddle leg the same thing?

 

[PoultryPedia]

There is a lot of info on the Poultry Podiatry page on the website linked in my sig on treating a slipped tendon &/or splayed leg.

Did this bird learn to walk correctly BEFORE it ever showed a leg problem?

 

[4chickenscratch]

Thanks, we'll check that out. And she did walk properly before.

 

[PoultryPedia]

I think there's a very good chance she has a Slipped Tendon in her hock joint. How long ago did her leg start looking funny? I would try out treating it ASAP using the info on my site or other sources.

 

[4chickenscratch]

We read the podiatry page, which was very helpful by the way, and started treating her asap. She has been on polyvisol and crushed brewers yeast tablets along with her chicken food for 1 + weeks and at the beginning of the week we had wrapped her legs the hobble technique, so that they could straighten out. Now we put her in a sling like was suggested. We are doing the physical therapy too. We also wanted to move her achilies tendon, but we didn't know where her tendon is and how to move it. But we are sure from the info/descriptions and photos that is what we are dealing with, a slipped achillies tendon.

As of right now we took her out of the sling because she was very annoyed with it. However, to fix her curled toes we wrapped each of the toes and then wrapped a "boot", a plastic lid container cut to size, around the foot as well.

Do you have a slightly more detailed way of trying to straighten her leg out? We are afraid to hurt her and don't know the proper way to do it. She has been trying to stand on it and I think the boot is helping with the balance, but her whole leg is twisted to the side.

 

[PoultryPedia]

It sounds like you've been giving her some serious TLC!

edited by staff

 

[4chickenscratch]

Here is the most recent picture of Diamond.

She seems to be doing better when we put her in the boot, but how long would she need to have it on? She's running with the rest of her sisters, but isn't keeping up to their pace. Is there anything else we can do for her or is this going to be permanent now?