Emu Chick info on splayed legs

[usfarmchicks]

Hello,

I just hatched my first emu chick yesterday. I'm completely terrified of the chick getting splayed legs. I have the crate set up with non-slip shelf liner and towels on top of that.

She hatched yesterday morning so is still not up walking around gracefully. Should I worry that she seems to put her legs out to the sides or is this just normal learning to walk? She doesn't seem to be slipping just un-cooridinated.

Any one of pics of a day old chick moving around?

 

[yinepu]

Hello,

I just hatched my first emu chick yesterday. I'm completely terrified of the chick getting splayed legs. I have the crate set up with non-slip shelf liner and towels on top of that.

She hatched yesterday morning so is still not up walking around gracefully. Should I worry that she seems to put her legs out to the sides or is this just normal learning to walk? She doesn't seem to be slipping just un-cooridinated.

Any one of pics of a day old chick moving around?

newly hatched chicks often have a stumbling gait.. especially chicks incubated at higher temps.. give it a day or two and see how it does. the most important things you can do is to feed them a good diet and provide non slip flooring.

 

[usfarmchicks]

Thanks I've switched up the flooring from towels to a carpet. It has better traction on that for sure and today is up and moving about better. Still walking a bit like a drunk but I figure that is because it is only just 2 days old.

It has started drinking water. I've got kale, carrots and spinach along with unmedicated chick crumbles for it when it starts to eat. Everything I have read has said 4 or 5 days before it will start actually eating.

 

[yinepu]

Thanks I've switched up the flooring from towels to a carpet. It has better traction on that for sure and today is up and moving about better. Still walking a bit like a drunk but I figure that is because it is only just 2 days old.

It has started drinking water. I've got kale, carrots and spinach along with unmedicated chick crumbles for it when it starts to eat. Everything I have read has said 4 or 5 days before it will start actually eating.

add in some chopped collard greens and layer crumbles.. the chick will need the extra calcium

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Could someone knowledgeable about splayed-leg syndrome – and false modesty is unhelpful here – write a short ‘paper’ on the problem?

I only have one datum: a guy I know turned up with a chick about two weeks old. He had caught it on foot in the bush!!

I named it ‘Bruce,’ and set about caring for it. Just six or eight hours later, I realised that it had a club foot, and chose to put it down.

R.I.P., Bruce.

It seems likely that my mate was able to catch the chick because it was slow. Without a doubt, 'nature' would weed out deformed chicks very very fast. Without a doubt, data on this problem in the wild would be extremely difficult to gather – but not so from ‘safari parks,’ where males regularly incubate clutches ‘naturally.’

S.E. has had the chance to examine only four young wild emu chick in five years. One had a deformity. Insufficient data.

P.s.: I broke open one of the infertile eggs left by Boy Emu. It was amazingly heavy, and contained a fully-formed but dead chick. The way in which the chick was ‘folded up’ in the egg was astounding. This stuff is common knowledge to you guys, but most unusual to me.


S.E.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Usfarmchicks,

a number of us got to observe the hatching of a clutch of wild chicks last year. (You’d have to troll through ‘Mating-Season in Australia. Probably around Page 20.) It was almost five days from the sighting of the first chick to the moment at which the male chose to abandon the two unhatched eggs, and move with the clutch to water. The chicks spent part of their time under the male. Here’s a picture of the male, ‘Boy Emu.’ There are five chicks under him in this photo.



The chicks spent some of their time standing in a gaggle just a foot or eighteen inches from B.E., by his shoulder. On the last two days, they ventured up to ten or fifteen feet away. I had placed fresh water in a dish, but, to my surprise, they ignored it. They didn't eat. (And gee, guys, we sure would like to have a high-quality photo of B.E. and the chicks drinking just after they ‘hit the trail.’ There is nothing like that on the Net!)

Usfarmchicks, here also, for what it’s worth, is a picture of two very young wild emu chicks (rothschilidi, South West Western Australia) that we rescued and gave to a refuge. They had terrible trouble with the wood floor in the hours that they were here before they went to the refuge (in an old Gladstone bag).



S.E.

 

[usfarmchicks]

I gave it some collard greens today. Boy she/he is loving it. We've hung it so he/she has to pull at it and he/she is going to town on it. Everything I was reading said they don't necessarily start eating until 4 or 5 days after hatching. This little one is ahead of the curve, it started eating yesterday and is chowing down on the collard greens today and only hatched out on Monday.

 

[yinepu]

I gave it some collard greens today. Boy she/he is loving it. We've hung it so he/she has to pull at it and he/she is going to town on it. Everything I was reading said they don't necessarily start eating until 4 or 5 days after hatching. This little one is ahead of the curve, it started eating yesterday and is chowing down on the collard greens today and only hatched out on Monday.

give it as much of the collards as it will eat.. they are packed with vitamins and calcium

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

And 'pulling them down' is good exercise for their necks.

S.E.

 

[IlaWampa]

Unfortunately one of our two month old chicks has a really bad splayed leg. We thought it was getting a little better after he got in the bigger pen and was getting more exercise. However, the last two days he can barely walk. His leg is turned all the way around. I guess my question is, how do I put him down? I'm so so sad

The other one is doing fine. I guess we'll have a Zag without a Zig, to go with our Thing One without a Thing Two...