Drooping Head-4 week Chick

[HotCityChicks]

My chicks are 4 weeks old today. Everything has been going smoothly until yesterday. One of them (a Rhode Island Red) is walking around with a drooping head. It's like she's constantly staring at the ground. She seems healthy otherwise. She's not lethargic. She's eating, drinking, exploring the brooder and doing other normal chick stuff. She does sleep funny because she keeps her head drooped. She's not getting picked on by the others. I went back to adding water-soluble supplements and electrolytes to their water everyday. I used that the first 5 days after they hatched and then went to about once a week. She seems slightly improved today. Her head is not as low. What is going on with her? What should I be doing? Has anyone else experienced this?

I appreciate your help!

 

[hrhta812]

The vitamins should help if it's wry neck. I've also heard people say they hold the chick and gently massage the neck area. It's a pretty tiny area, so you'd just be using fingertips. Here's a link to a blog where a lady talks about how she dealt with this problem: http://huckfarm.com/wry-neck/

Hope this helps!

 

[HotCityChicks]

Thanks for your help. She seems to actually be doing worse tonight. Her head is very low and sometimes she tumbles forward. We are so worried about her. We are trying the massaging thing. We'll stick with the vitamins and massaging and hopefully she will improve.

 

[hrhta812]

I'm sorry to hear she's doing worse instead of better. I found some older threads about wry neck and one person swears by Poly Vi Sol liquid baby vitamins - not the version with iron, just the plain - 2 drops a day, and in that same thread, they said to feed the chick raw egg yolk with an eye dropper. This combination supposedly worked very well.

Is she eating or drinking at all now?

I don't know how much of the egg yolk you should try to get in the chick per feeding, but if she hasn't been eating, I would start very small, and repeat hourly for a few feedings. I would probably just try to get maybe 1/2 ml. in her and then an hour later another 1/2, and then an hour later 1 ml. You don't want to overload her tummy, but she's got to keep a good steady intake of nutrition going.

This is just an absolute guess - I've only ever worked with newborn orphan kittens, no birds. I don't know how tiny their crops are, how much they can hold, etc.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/publications/6/diseases-of-poultry/218/vitamin-e-deficiency
Check this out.

Also, as a side note, I once observed one of my chickens after an injury - she spent about 24 hours with her neck hanging and then made a full recovery. I presume it was a neck strain.

I am glad your chicken seems to be on the mend now.