Chick's Tongue got tourniqueted by a grass "string"! Has this ever hap

[LaDeja]

My 4 week old chicks were surfing the grass, pasturing, when it came time to put them up. One stray was crying strangely, I got him, his tongue was tied with some hair-like grass. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth. The bade had 2" strand left, to which I held onto and got tiny scissorst to try to get under it to cut. It took 45 minutes but I finally got the scissor imbetween his tongue and blade of grass! His tongue was white and no blood was getting to it. Geez I hope it never happens again.

 

[luvmychicknkids]

Poor little baby. I have heard of some chickies losing part of their tongue that way. Hope the little guy is alright.

 

[LaDeja]

Thank You. He seemed o.k. after it finally got cut, it was close to night so I'll check 1st thing in morning. Thank you for letting me know that this can happen. It is endearing the way a sick chicken can become so passive and calm to receive help.

 

[luvmychicknkids]

Yes, it is, but then I find most things about chickens endearing.

They are special little animals. One thing to remember, if something bad happens to one of your chickens and you are feeling bad, you shouldn't. It has happened before to someone's chicken, probably to lots of someone's chickens. No matter how hard we try to take perfect care of them, things happen. I am sure he will recover just fine.

And I forgot to say,

 

[LaDeja]

They are special indeed. Again thanks for all the support. With 100 new chicks inside house, my focus was on them; babies are so fragile. They are doing well. But when I let the 4 wk olds out today, a black one had gotten really stuck behind their miniature "houses" and the pen fencing. I sat outside with him after cleaning him up, for 2 hours. He was really dying, but after 2 hours, he slowly bounced back. So it was a learning day for me. Life, all life is precariosly in place. So 2 close calls in 1 day had me uh unfeathered.

 

[chickenannie]

Welcome to BYC and all of us who've developed neurosis from taking care of our chicks too! Your addiction and neurosis over caring for them will only get worse, trust me, but at least you can rely on BYC members for support! As someone wrote once... chicks do a lot of stupid things!

As for the grass around the tongue incident, I've had chicks and especially turkey poults try to gobble down a long blade of grass only to realize it's 12 inches long and it gets stuck. Once a chick was gagging and I had to pull a long grass blade out and it was like 6 inches inside the chick and 6 inches hanging off the beak. Chick was fine but it was hard to deal with for me, but I had to do it because the chick couldn't swallow and couldn't cough it up or cut it off. It had been there for more than a day or two.