Help! Neurologic turkey chicks!

[jillrm]

We picked up six turkey chicks about 3 weeks ago, along with some chicks, one died within a few days, and within a few days after that another one started having trouble with one leg. It is now apparent that it is neurologic in basis and he seems to be deteriorating.... Today, another turkey chick started with the same symptoms! They are kept in clean wood chips, changed frequently, water and food changed twice a day. High quality food, medicated crumbles. Electrolytes and probiotics added to their water.... I am fairly new to poultry raising, this is my second batch of chicks.... First batch was healthy and easy, but no turkeys....

 

[ivan3]

Sorry your having these difficulties

Are you feeding Game bird Starter? What variety of turkeys are these? Switch to plain, clean water with nothing added. Describe first unusual sign you observed and how this progressed to the leg(s) and what the happens then (loss of movement in leg/odd positioning of leg). Any unusual droppings? Describe behaviors that are `neurological' in origin.

You do have the poults isolated from any chicks, yes?

 

[jillrm]

The first one appeared initially as though he had injured his leg. We put him in with smaller chicks because the bigger ones were trampling him. We then noticed that he also sermed to have some weakness in the wing on that same side. Kind of limps, and drags the leg, with his foot curled up in a weird way. But sometimes he gets it under himself and stands pretty normally. If another bird bumps him, he loses all balance and plops and rolls to the weak side. Sometimes his neck seems off balance, too. He seems to get around and eat and drink okay. He has seemed alert for the most part. He is on chicken starter crumbles- medicated. We don't have the game starter available.

 

[Haida]

His neck being off balance as well as the curled toes makes it sound like a vitamin deficiency. I'm not sure about the wings, though. It might be linked to the food you're giving them... turkey starter is a bit different than chicken starter. They need a lot of protein, too... if you hardboil some eggs for them and give them just the yolk, that might help. You can also put a few teaspoons of baker's yeast over their food (you can find it in the pharmacy section of a grocery store) or maybe some Poly-Vi-Sol (with no iron) in their water. But it does sound like you have your bases covered pretty well, so I'm not really sure... but that's what I would do.

Out of curiosity, where did you get the poults from?

Good luck, though, I hope he gets better!!

 

[bustedchicks]

I read that certain types of wood chips can cause adverse effects.