I found one of my hens with what looks like a broken or sprained leg/ ankle. I am New to chickens so I have no clue what to do for her any information would be a great help.
I have had 2 chicks with broken legs. The first one was born okay and the next day it looked broken. You can make a very effective splint out of a tongue depressor and some strong( not duct ) tape. Put the leg in as normal a position as possible without hurting the chick and splint it from above the injury to just below. Be careful not to tape it to tight or you may cut off circulation. Within a week or so the leg should be okay. Keep in mind always that living in pain is not living. You may have to make a hard decision. Our second one was born with it's leg straight and the foot drawn up. We can only guess that something happened to it while it was hatching. We did not do a thing this time. The chick got around just fine and it's fellow brooder mates didn't bother her. As she got older and bigger getting up on the good leg became difficult. She died from a massive infection in a wound we never saw because it was under her wing. We found the wound on Wednesday and on Thursday she was having seizures from a high temperature. I wrapped her up in a towel and rocked her till she passed away. She was almost 3 months old so we were all very attached to her. It would have been kinder to allow my husband to put her out of her misery earlier in life. You have to make the choice and stick to it. If your hen is full grown, you need to remove it from the pen with the others because if they see her having trouble they will attack and kill her.
Hi and welcome to BYC! I would say that the first thing to do it to get her isolated so she can't get beat up by the others, and also so you can keep an eye on her. Keep her warm and with fresh water and food. Check her over very carefully to be sure she doesn't have some kind of open wound somewhere... can you describe in a bit more detail what her injury looks like, when it happened, how old she is, what breed, free ranging or in coop, etc etc. The more details you can give us the more accurate our help can be Is she eating? Drinking? Does she still move around? All these details can give clues. If you can take any photos of her leg that can also be helpful...
