Curling toes

[Debrawynn]

Help! The chicks we hatched this weekend were doing fine. Now one little one has toes curling in and just sitting not running and having fun like the rest. What now?

 

[jbowyer01]

What do you have them standing on (pine shavings, paper towels etc...) Could be spraddle leg and its fairly easy to fix. I take a little bandaid and place the chicks foot flat on the sticky part and then flip the other end of the bandaid ove covering the chicks foot like a little shoe. It causes the foot to stay nice and flat. After two or three days you can remove it and the chick should be fine. I left my chick in with the others and just kept an eye on them to make sure that they all behaved and didnt pick on the chick to much (they did do a little pecking out of curiosity but I made sure there was feed kind sprinkled about so they were a little more interested in that than the bandaid.) Also if your using newspaper make sure you change it to papertowels so that its not as slippery for the chicks.

 

[dianneS]

I made band aid shoes for mine too. I also gave her some shelf-liner stuff to walk on so that she could get better traction. She only wore the shoes overnight and by morning her toes were straight and were fine ever since.

 

[Lotsapaints]

I kept mine on a towel thought I would have to make her a shoe by 2 days her foot was normal and she was running around so I didn't need to make her a shoe. I kept mine out of the brooder with all the chicks and just had her in with 3 others so I could watch her good. The more she exercised the better it got mine was really curled under I thought it would never look normal too.