Chickens foot has healed stiff

[Hoogan]

At about six weeks old I noticed one of my chickens wouldn't stand on her foot. After a day or two I separated her from the rest, put pine shavings down and am giving her b vitamins. She had it all curled up and hopped around on the other. I checked it and it didn't seem to be a sprain and it didn't seem blatantly broken, but I didn't want to mess with it too much if it was a break. My guess is that she got it caught in something, it seemed a tad swollen.

It's been about three weeks now and she's starting to use it, but it's still all curled up. She uses it for balance a bit and to nose around her food dish so today I checked it again and her toes are all stiff. So I started, very gently stretching them back out until there was resistance and no more. I was planning on doing this almost every day, sort of a physical chicken therapy

Main thing is, I don't want to hurt her more, so I would love to hear from you all any similar experiences or ideas to get her to use it again. Once they get bigger they will be free range and there are neighborhood cats that have already expressed quite an interest in her since she is injured so I would like to get her foot working again.

Thanks so much!

 

[TeamChaos]

The idea of chicken physical therapy is a wonderful one and I'm glad you're willing to put in the time. I want to share this page with you not because it specifically addresses your problem (it might) but because it's given me a lot of good working theories in my own "chicken therapy" approaches. https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-podiatry


Best of luck!