Crooked ankle-foot

[WestKnollAmy]

I have been battling this poor pea chick's feet since it hatched to straighten out the feet. The other foot is fine finally but this one I bandage every day and must be doing it wrong because I can not get it to straighten out at all.
Can anyone show me or tell me how to bandage this ankle to help it turn and make it correct? She is going on a week old and I can't get it to do more than this. I can do feet but this ankle crap is vexing me. She walks but not well, of course. And with her bandage on she can't really get up and move much at all. (I have always been bad at bandaging)
I am sure the ankle needs to be dealt with before the toes will straighten and I do massage every day when I take the bandage off. She hates when I put another one on.

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Well, since it seems no one has experience with this problem, maybe I can help others.
Like I said, I am terrible at bandaging but this baby is a week old today and she could not even walk or sit up for her first few days of life so I kept her in a cup with her toes bandaged.
The other foot is fine and I am battling this twisted ankle. I take the bandage off every day, massage that ankle and foot and bandage again. She is not gaining much weight so I put her back in with the new hatches today where she is closer to food and water. I found her on her side this morning and feared she had given up so that is one reason for the move back to the box.

Here is the foot after bandaging again this morning. I think it has made a little improvement.






Never say never! We will keep on while the bones and ligaments are still soft and supple.

 

[casportpony]

Wow, never seen that before, but it looks like you're making a little progress.

-Kathy

 

[new 2 pfowl]

I have no experience with this at all, but I wonder if you could make a "splint" out of wire,
in the form that the toes should take,
sort of like this shape:

and then tape each toe to it individually?

 

[allbirds4me]

I think if I were you, ( gosh knows how hard it is to work with those fragile tiny feet/legs), I'd try to straighten that foot out onto something firm like a small piece of cardboard or something similar...then tape the straightened out foot/toes to that and leave it on for at least 2-3 days without removing it during that time.
have seen people leave photos here of all kinds of good ways to do this type thing , maybe they will leave some more pics. here of how they did it.

does look like you're making progress but try and get it just like it " should" be and don't remove the bandaging etc. for those days.
your efforts seem to be starting to pay off !

a good vitamin supplement would help during this and for several more weeks after ...one that has a decent amount of "various" B's in it, along with calcium .
dicalcium phosphate is supposed to be best for chicks ( has the right calcium/phos. ratio for them ) and B vitamins are very important for proper bone growth, etc. as are fresh air and sunshine.
You can add just human kind of B "complex" if need be but try and find some that have that form of calcium in it, you have to check the ingredient label closely.
most all B complexes have calcium added but few have "dicalcium phosphate" as the calcium source.
Sundown B complex 100% has it but not the newer version . I've seen it on ebay where it has the dicalcium form though. ( it's hard to find )
don't give too much at one time, they don't taste good and you want to be sure it does get it in it's system.

I think once you get that foot straightened out you will see that ankle do so also, hope so anyway !

 

[Trefoil]

I think it would be better to keep her off wire until she's all better at least.

 

[casportpony]

I think it would be better to keep her off wire until she's all better at least.

X2.

-Kathy

 

[WestKnollAmy]

She wasn't on wire, she was in shavings. The wire is the top of the cage.

I add Avian Super Pack vitamins to their water 3 days a week and Niacin the other 3 days and they get one day of plain water so she was getting that.
Their brooder box is right next to an open window so they have a bit of sunlight (but not direct sun) and fresh air since we do not have AC in the house.

I got her foot and ankle all straightened out but then she died. She got lethargic after I removed all her bandages and though she could walk, she acted like she did not want to but we did some physical therapy every day and I kept massaging the foot. She seemed to be eating and drinking. I saw her with the others but she was probably in some sort of pain that I could not tell about and ate and drank so little that she dehydrated and died. That is only a guess on my part. She was not skinny but it was only 2 days after the splint was off before she died.

 

[casportpony]

I'm so sorry!

-Kathy

 

[WestKnollAmy]

I wondered if there was possibly something else wrong. She was stuck in the egg for a long while and had not pipped more in 12 hours so it could have been something else but she made it a long while after hatching. It is super sad to lose one. She was a pretty thing. Thank you for the condolences.