Chicken with Broken neck

LilyD

Crowing
12 Years
Jan 24, 2011
3,287
4,294
492
Bristol, VT
My Coop
My Coop
So last night we changed bands on all of this years chickens and everyone was fine hail and hearty and giving us a really hard time for waking them up. This morning I went out to feed the chickens and one of the younger roosters was standing up but could not raise his head or move anything from the base of his shoulders up. He could blink his eyes and breath but that was about it. I am thinking that is must have been an injury and he got his neck broken or injured somehow but could it be any illnesses causing this. He is housed with another 18 roosters in a 10 foot by 60 foot pen. Everyone else is acting fine but I don't want to take a chance that they will get sick too if it is an illness.
 
Poor fellow. I think you are right about it being a broken neck if he can't move. Mareks disease can cause paralysis, but usually not involving the whole body at once.
 
Nerves run down. If he broke his neck and had paralysis, from the injury down would be paralyzed. Look into "wry neck" in chickens and see if that could be the problem.
 
This was more like he couldn't move his neck and his head, but he could blink his eyes very slowly. He had absolutely no feeling in his head or neck either and would twist it around in very unnatural positions. I have never seen that before so I was hoping someone on here might have more insight. I took him out of the pen with the other roosters. I was wondering if maybe someone jumped on him and caused an injury or something else. Not sure. I do know that all the roosters were extremely healthy last night as we checked each individually to see if they needed their bands taken off and changed.
 
He died shortly after I made the post it was twisted unnaturally but it was limp not stiff like the chicks I have had with wry neck. It was very limp and flaccid like he had no control over the neck or muscles. Never seen anything like it.
 

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