Crooked toes on several 12 wk old chicks

[chicknjane]

My chicks have been developing fine. Eating like little piggies. Today, I noticed that a few of them have developed crooked toes. They are otherwise fine. I did notice one, without curled toes, poop milky white liquid.

Here are the basics:

1) What type of bird , age and weight. They are a mixture of RIR, Barred Rocks, Dominiques and Wellsummers
2) What is the behavior, exactly. Normal, active
3) How long has the bird been exhibiting symptoms? They are given a weekly once over. I did not notice the toes last week, only just today, my DH was caring for them for past 3 days while I was sick, he didn't notice anything.
4) Is there any bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma. No
5) What happened, if anything that you know of, that may have caused the situation. I just don't know
6) What has the bird been eating and drinking, if at all. They all eat Hubbard's brand flock developer.
7) How does the poop look? Normal? Bloody? Runny? etc. Mostly they are all normal, I did notice one chick poop milky white liquid. Its hard to tell as there are 23 in one 100sf coop.
8) What has been the treatment you have administered so far? Nothing, don't know what I'm dealing with yet and can't find my Chicken Health Handbook.
9 ) What is your intent as far as treatment? For example, do you want to treat completely yourself, or do you need help in stabilizing the bird til you can get to a vet? Self treat
10) If you have a picture of the wound or condition, please post it. It may help. Pictures to follow
11) Describe the housing/bedding in use They are in a 100sf coop with plywood flooring covered in pine shavings, using DLM.

I hope this is enough info. They were brooded inside and moved out to their coop in December. They have never been outside the coop. I have not noticed any sneezing, running noses or other signs of respiratory infection.

I did have a 3 gallon waterer leak which soaked a corner of the coop about two weeks ago, I cleaned it up scooped out the wet and put in new pine shavings.

I'll post photos within the hour.

Thank you,
Marcy

 

[Kittymomma]

I've heard that this is caused by a nutritional deficiancy, BUT a bunch of mine (that were fed a good starter/grower feed) did that at around the same age. The strange thing was that a week or two later their toes all were back to normal. They are nearly a year old now and are healthy, happy, and look completly normal.

 

[chicknjane]

Here are pictures of two barred rock or dominique (I didn't look at the combs, just the feet sorry) These are not the worse, there is a RIR whose toes are worse. It appears as though there are only 3-4 out of the 23 with crooked toes so far.

I remember seeing a thread on this before, I just couldn't find it. Probably using the wrong words in the search. Thank you.

 

[chicknjane]

Kittymomma, I hope that is the case with my bunch.

 

[Kittymomma]

That's how mine looked too, some of them were really bad. I hope yours get better like mine did!

 

[aveca]

If they started out straight and did that as they grew then there is some sort of nutritional deficiency... You can get chicken vitamins and suppliments at farm and tractor or most feed stores.. This time of year there are shortcomings in diets cause they cant get out in the vitamin rich grasses ect... Dont overdo it thou,

Vitamin A plays a role....shredded carrots do good hings for chcikens , thier eggs and selves in winter, we give them no less than 2 X a week, super bright yolks from carrots

 

[chicknjane]

Thank you aveca, I'll try giving them a treat of carrots. I'm going to the feed store today for vitamin supplement for their water. They get the same feed as my older chickens and the older ones never had this problem, but the older ones have free ranged since they were 4 weeks old.