disabled chick

[flg8r]

He's a week old now. I've tried to band aid his legs 2-3x and it doesn't work. (I taped another baby, hatched the same time and s/he is fine.)

He can not get his feet together and under him. They end up out to the side or behind him. He scoots around on his side but ends up on his back a lot. Half the time I find him under the paper towels. I don't think he can even get upright enough to eat or drink so I'm helping him with that and even then we struggle. Is there anything else I can try to get his legs going in the right direction before I cull?

I'm such a total wimp, I don't know if I can cull but I also know he can't live like this. I read up on the co2 treatment and I may have to go that route and hope it works. Poor baby.

 

[silver-quail]

Cull it

 

[spikennipper]

Sadly yes the time has come to cull, a week should be long enough to see an improvement if there is going to be one, if you can't do it perhaps get someone else to? I find the quickest way and least painful for a young chick is to get some scissors hold it over the bin and cut the head quickly and drop it in without looking, never tried the C02 method but that just sounds like suffocation to me which can't be a good way to go?

 

[flg8r]

I had a party this weekend. I asked a vet, a retired farm girl and another one who had previously helped me cull and none would/could do it. I think maybe because it's so small and helpless and we're all clearly wimpy city folk. The vet (my brother) told me to give it a few more days.

Because I help him so much I'm attached to him, I just couldn't look him in the eye and then behead him.

CO2 is not painful - people die from co2 poisoning because it's so painless, you just fall asleep.

 

[flg8r]

I couldn't watch him flipping around any more. Even my 13yo said he was suffering. I used co2 and it was super fast. I would not use it for an adult (they would be too big and move too much anyway) but for a small chick it works. I tested the mixture of baking soda and vinegar to make sure I had a big enough reaction without it overflowing on him.

 

[silver-quail]

Explain this co2 culling exp method to me please might have to try it some time

 

[flg8r]

If you put together baking soda and vinegar (grade school "volcano") the bubbles it makes is CO2.

Because it was a tiny chick, undersized for even his 1 week of age, and couldn't move much (which is really the only scenario I could see for this method), it was easy to put him in a container and close the lid. I put him on a few paper towels. In a smaller container next to him, I put as much baking soda and vinegar as I could without it overflowing. About 3 heaping tbsp of baking soda to 1/2c of vinegar. As soon as you pour the vinegar in, close the lid to the outer bowl tight and within a second or two, they're asleep. I left the lid on for a minute to make sure he was actually gone.

 

[clawstar]

No... I had a quail like that it took a week or two then grew out of it now her name is Issic due to disputes with gravity