Ducks unable to use lower legs and feet

[fatso13]

My DH went to the local tsc and brought home two baby ducks that can't walk--one walks on her knees and the other just kind of slides on her belly. It seems the second can use the upper part of her legs but can't stand on them like the other one. Just wondering if there is anything I can do to help them--any one have any history with something like this?

 

[Liz inHawaii]

This may not be germane to your problem but these are the problems I have had with ducks not being able to walk and how I have dealt with it.

I have Muscovies... I have had people on our farm feed the contents of the kitchen scraps bucket to my ducks. This is fine if the material is fresh, but on occasion they have waited several days, or cleaned a refrigerator out and fed bad food to my ducks. Ducks and geese seem to be really sensitive to spoiled or moldy feed, much more so than chickens. The ducks lose motor control and have trouble walking, or walk along and suddenly get exhausted and plunk down on the spot. In severe cases, they lose control of both their neck and leg muscles and can't even hold their heads up. On the last occasion that this happened, 25 ducks were affected, some were stretched out comatose when I found them, some were just unable to walk. My techniques with affected ducks is to intubate each duck and hydrate them with 60 - 120 cc of water. I do this to flush the toxins out of the duck. I watch the degree to which the handling is stressing the duck and minimize or stop if the duck can't take the stress. I set the ducks in a comfortable sheltered area on clean bedding. If they are able to keep their head up I arrange them arround a shallow bowl of water so they can drink if they want to. I repeat the procedure every 12 hours till the duck can drink by itself, and gradually introduce food when they show interest in it. Of the 25 ducks, 13 were so badly affected, they died overnight. The ones that died were the most robust ducks in the yard, so they probably got a larger helping of the tainted food. The others ducks recovered fully and are healthy at this time, even though it took about 5 days of hydrating and arranging the ducks around the water dishes before all the ducks were recovered. Needless to say, the intern who fed the ducks the bad food is no longer with us, and I have strict orders that no-one gives the ducks kitchen scraps unless it is absolutely fresh and they get my okay.

I have also dealt with about 6 different ducks who sustained a broken leg. In each case I split the leg with a padded stick of suitable length and attach it to the duck's leg with self adhering Vet Wrap and put the duck in a cage where I can catch it and tend to the splint if needed.. The duck usually sits down for about a week, then they start getting up and putting weight on the splinted leg and walking on it. It has always worked and the legs have always mended, even one where the leg was broken so close to the body that I was doubtful that it would work.

 

[fatso13]

Thanks for the info--I may try the splint and see if it will help. From what I've been told these duck hatched this way. My DH did not ask too many questions of the guy and just thought maybe we could help them. Very big heart and couldn't just let the guy dispose of them. I probably would have have done the same thing.