Hey guys,
I've got a bit of an emergency on my hands. I'll try to make it as short as possible, but I really need help because I'm getting a little desperate.
This is Tsubasa. She's the runt of the flock. We started with 6 chickens, 1 died, so we added 2 more which were the Light Brahma's. One ended up being a rooster, who is very docile (but still very young) and one pullet, Tsubasa. We've introduced them to the first flock as instructed on numerous sites. We divided them off with a net, and eventually put them in together at night. However, since the beginning of them starting to cohabitate, the older chickens, especially my two Barred Rocks, have been harassing her relentlessly. They chase her away from food, pull out her feathers, and sometimes they don't even stop doing either. They keep doing it and doing it, until poor Tsubasa, tired and unable to defend herself, quite literally sticks her head into the corner like an ostrich and hopes they stop. It's mainly my two BR that are doing it, but the others join in if it happens sometimes. We are in the process of building a new, larger coop, and I'm thinking of locking up the two BRs in there for a few days to break up their flock order.
I've had to break up the harassment multiple times, and in the past week, it's gotten worse. She became unable to run and started hobbling around on her hocks. The picture above is of her unwillingly laying on her side after I bandaged her knees. Before they were bandaged, I took her inside to our custom built shelves and after we did some research, we thought that this may have happened because she doesn't get enough food, or a riboflavin deficiency because the symptoms matched.
She hobbles around using her wings, but it seems as if she lost all strength and can't even keep her front up. Because of that, she has major freak outs, and in her effort to get up and move, she flaps around, tumbles, backpedals into walls, and even fell off the shelf a couple of times and out of my hands. This is what happened after a few days of her having these fits:
These are her left and right legs. She's banged them up bad enough that it bled a little, thus I bandaged her legs. However, she continues to have these random freak outs, and because of her previous falls, (and also since all of this culminated as of yesterday), I got really desperate.
This is what I did, 1) because it was late, and I really needed to get into bed, and 2) because I was afraid she was going to break her neck, or wings with her fits.
Please don't laugh or scold me. I am really at my wits end on what to do for her. We have a huge financial strain on our wallets this year due to several private reasons, and I don't have enough money for a vet visit. We took my boyfriend's old, but clean underwear and cut it so that her legs fit through, then suspended her using the lamp frame as you can see. This was the only way I could think of to allow her to move her legs, but also keep her stationary, so that if she does freak out, she doesn't hurt herself. She can poop
So far, it has worked. As you can see, I put food and water within reach. She has absolutely no issues eating or drinking. Yesterday, I force fed her a quarter of my acetiminophen (I use extra strength ones for my headaches) to help with the pain, then used the syringe again to give her water. The reason it's yellow is because a dropped a teaspoonful of poultry vitamins into the water, which does include riboflavin and gave her some bread a couple of days before.
Is this because she is undernourished, or because this is something wose? I would really appreciate some help because I don't know what to do. The symptoms she's having match Marek's and vitamin deficiency, but if it's the latter, am I just panicking for no reason and just need to give her a few more days, or weeks to get back onto her feet? Or is this something I may have to cull her for?
Thank you in advance.
I've got a bit of an emergency on my hands. I'll try to make it as short as possible, but I really need help because I'm getting a little desperate.
This is Tsubasa. She's the runt of the flock. We started with 6 chickens, 1 died, so we added 2 more which were the Light Brahma's. One ended up being a rooster, who is very docile (but still very young) and one pullet, Tsubasa. We've introduced them to the first flock as instructed on numerous sites. We divided them off with a net, and eventually put them in together at night. However, since the beginning of them starting to cohabitate, the older chickens, especially my two Barred Rocks, have been harassing her relentlessly. They chase her away from food, pull out her feathers, and sometimes they don't even stop doing either. They keep doing it and doing it, until poor Tsubasa, tired and unable to defend herself, quite literally sticks her head into the corner like an ostrich and hopes they stop. It's mainly my two BR that are doing it, but the others join in if it happens sometimes. We are in the process of building a new, larger coop, and I'm thinking of locking up the two BRs in there for a few days to break up their flock order.
I've had to break up the harassment multiple times, and in the past week, it's gotten worse. She became unable to run and started hobbling around on her hocks. The picture above is of her unwillingly laying on her side after I bandaged her knees. Before they were bandaged, I took her inside to our custom built shelves and after we did some research, we thought that this may have happened because she doesn't get enough food, or a riboflavin deficiency because the symptoms matched.
She hobbles around using her wings, but it seems as if she lost all strength and can't even keep her front up. Because of that, she has major freak outs, and in her effort to get up and move, she flaps around, tumbles, backpedals into walls, and even fell off the shelf a couple of times and out of my hands. This is what happened after a few days of her having these fits:
These are her left and right legs. She's banged them up bad enough that it bled a little, thus I bandaged her legs. However, she continues to have these random freak outs, and because of her previous falls, (and also since all of this culminated as of yesterday), I got really desperate.
This is what I did, 1) because it was late, and I really needed to get into bed, and 2) because I was afraid she was going to break her neck, or wings with her fits.
Please don't laugh or scold me. I am really at my wits end on what to do for her. We have a huge financial strain on our wallets this year due to several private reasons, and I don't have enough money for a vet visit. We took my boyfriend's old, but clean underwear and cut it so that her legs fit through, then suspended her using the lamp frame as you can see. This was the only way I could think of to allow her to move her legs, but also keep her stationary, so that if she does freak out, she doesn't hurt herself. She can poop
So far, it has worked. As you can see, I put food and water within reach. She has absolutely no issues eating or drinking. Yesterday, I force fed her a quarter of my acetiminophen (I use extra strength ones for my headaches) to help with the pain, then used the syringe again to give her water. The reason it's yellow is because a dropped a teaspoonful of poultry vitamins into the water, which does include riboflavin and gave her some bread a couple of days before.
Is this because she is undernourished, or because this is something wose? I would really appreciate some help because I don't know what to do. The symptoms she's having match Marek's and vitamin deficiency, but if it's the latter, am I just panicking for no reason and just need to give her a few more days, or weeks to get back onto her feet? Or is this something I may have to cull her for?
Thank you in advance.
Thank you in advance.
