EE Chick with a Crooked Beak.

[Ldeal]

I have a chick that is about 8 weeks old now. Her beak is completely not lined up at all. She takes a while to eat but is getting food into herself. She has lots of energy but a little on the thin side. We have another chick we got at the same time that is the same age and they are the same size still but you can feel a slight weight difference in the two. I was hoping she would live a happy life but i want to be sure that in her condition she is in that he life will be a happy one. Here are some pics of little Hollie's beak.

Please let me know what you all think and if there are some things i could do to help her out at all.

 

[ReikiStar]

Her beak is too long. You'll need to trim it but I'm afraid at this stage it would be hard to get it to a working length because the blood supply part has grown so long. It's pretty much like trimming a dog's nails.

We have an EE crossbeak who's 6 months now and his crop was so full yesterday I checked to make sure he wasn't impacted! They can live normal lives but you're going to have to keep that beak trimmed so they can get food into their mouths. We trim our EE weekly. We use a dremmel-like tool and only it takes 30 seconds to shave off any extra beak growth.

You can use a nail file, but always have a septic powder handy like QuikStop in case you hit the quick or blood filled living tissue. You can use corn starch in a pinch. See how much of her beak you can file off. I would suggest doing this weekly, it's usually a two person job.

Here's the problem, she's only 8 weeks old. The cross beak is a skull deformity, as she grows, the cross beak will change and it could get more and more severe. Keep her trimmed, monitor her growth and weight. People usually cull cross beaks (it's a genetic deformity) or they end up starving to death. I hope your girl will be one of the lucky ones, but she'll be a special needs chicken the rest of her life.

Good luck!

 

[Ldeal]

I just filled her beak down and it looks slightly better. this might sound like a weird question but i know with dogs and their quicks you can slowly over time shorten the nail and the quick will recede back. Would that be the same for her with regular beak trimmings?