Duckling with head tilt

[Kerath]

I have a week old pekin duckling who is keeping his head tiled to one side and circling. Seems fine otherwise, eating, drinking, etc. The other 7 I got at the same time seem totally fine. He is crested if that makes any difference. Has been eating game bird starter and unmedicated chicken starter (they were sharing the brooder with some guineas and chicks). I took this video today of the poor little guy....

All the distress is because I had just grabbed him and a friend and moved them from the brooder with all their buddies to a bigger enclosure. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[bexnd]

its got a rye neck bless it. i used to work in a hatchery hatching pekin x breeds and many had them im suprised he/she seems to be doing really well. we would cull rye necks and star gazer they wouldnt have survived in the barns in such large flocks.

you would be suprised what deformaties ducks can have when you see them hatch in such large quanteties, you see alot. we had 1 which had 4 legs a number with 3 legs some bald some no eyes, bent beaks, no tail . its the same with anything really. deformities happen.

 

[desertdarlene]

Oh man, he's cute! He's also crested and crested ducks have more neurological problems than non-crested. I notice that the problems become noticeable at about that age. A lot of people have good luck with vitamin therapies, so hopefully someone might come along and give some suggestions about that. If he doesn't get any worse and he's eating and drinking OK, he should be fine.

 

[Kerath]

I was afraid it might be neurological.

His eyes look fine. I checked the area where his ears should be and there's no discharge or anything so I'm not thinking ear infection (unless it's inner ear I suppose). I also can't feel anything wrong with the bones of his neck. I can manually stretch and straighten his neck out, but the minute I let go, he goes back to tilting it.

 

[Miss Lydia]

I was afraid it might be neurological.

His eyes look fine. I checked the area where his ears should be and there's no discharge or anything so I'm not thinking ear infection (unless it's inner ear I suppose). I also can't feel anything wrong with the bones of his neck. I can manually stretch and straighten his neck out, but the minute I let go, he goes back to tilting it.

I would get Poultry Nutri drench put it in their water it will be good for them all especially the one with wry neck. Excellent source of nutrients vit. a vitamin d3 vitamin e calcium etc. They are precious..

http://barnyardsandbackyards.org/2010/09/18/review-nutri-drench/

 

[Kerath]

Juat a quick update. I took Miss Lydia's advice and picked up some NutriDrench from TSC. Unfortunately, they did have the poultry version, so I got the goat version and used just a drop every time we filled their gallon waterer.

I'm happy to report that the little duckling in the picture is not so little anymore. The head tilt slowly got better and better and today he was out grazing with all the other ducklings and was totally normal (aside from having the world's biggest crest!) He is always the first in line for peas and is a very sweet guy. We affectionately refer to him as "Derpy" since he looked so goofy with the head tilt.

 

[Iain Utah]

Awesome news!!!

I too have a ducky that suddenly appeared with the same head tilt at day 8, except mine didn't walk in circles like yours in the video. We have been giving her polyvisol (human version of nutridrench) and within 48 hours she was already 99% better. We named her "Twist."

 

[grnidgodess]

What was the dosage of polyvisol that you used?

 

[Lovely Birds]

My two week old muscovy ducklings head is tilted to the side. So its called Rye Neck? What is that? What can I do to help it and is it suffering? Its eating and drinking, but I'm really worried about her/him.

 

[BackyardDucks8804]

Thank you for this information. My peking has the same issue and I'm going tomorrow to TSC to get the nutridrench.