SunshineMary
Chirping
Our broody Pilgrim goose hatched five fat, fluffy goslings last week. When she and the babies left the nest, I went to clean it out and found a few eggs remaining. Candling showed that one of the eggs had a live gosling inside, so I brought it inside and put it in the incubator to finish hatching. The hatch went poorly and the gosling had some blood loss but survived. However, she had severely spraddled legs and could only lie flat on her tummy and push herself around with her legs splayed out to the side.
I followed the recommendations I found online for how to manage spraddle legs in chicks. I bought vet wrap in the horse aisle at the feed store and cut two thin 4-inch long strips of it. Then I held the gosling firmly while my husband made two little cuffs around each leg between the knee joint and the ankle joint. Then he used a thin 7-inch long strip of vet wrap to hobble the legs at just slightly wider than a normal stance for a gosling.
We were amazed when we put her down because she was immediately able to stand! And now she is getting around in the brooder quite well.
We will change the vet wrap each day and check to see how much progress she is making. However, it does seem that this method will work and she will not have to be culled. Hooray! I wanted to share this in case it could help anyone else.
I followed the recommendations I found online for how to manage spraddle legs in chicks. I bought vet wrap in the horse aisle at the feed store and cut two thin 4-inch long strips of it. Then I held the gosling firmly while my husband made two little cuffs around each leg between the knee joint and the ankle joint. Then he used a thin 7-inch long strip of vet wrap to hobble the legs at just slightly wider than a normal stance for a gosling.
We were amazed when we put her down because she was immediately able to stand! And now she is getting around in the brooder quite well.
We will change the vet wrap each day and check to see how much progress she is making. However, it does seem that this method will work and she will not have to be culled. Hooray! I wanted to share this in case it could help anyone else.
