Lethargic Silkie pullet

[ErinFitz]

She is 11 weeks old and we just got her a day ago, she doesn't move around much at all and does a weird thing that's a little hard to explain so please bear with me.

She will look to the right or down, and then in slow motion lift her head back and then it dips again, all in slow motion over and over. I may just be worrying too much but the other Silkie doesn't do it.

 

[Eggcessive]

Did she have a Mareks vaccine? Here is some information on wry neck and Mareks in case she is showing signs: http://oureggbasket.blogspot.com/2013/04/wry-neck-or-crook-neck-understanding-it.html
http://extension.unh.edu/resources/files/Resource000791_Rep813.pdf

 

[realsis]

Sounds like it could be the beginning of wry neck. I raise silkies and had three cases myself this last year. I was successful in curing them completely by following to a tee Alan stanfords treatment for wry neck. You will find this treatment on the website brown egg blue egg.com.look in the index under crook neck. It explains what wry neck or crook neck is and how to successfully treat it.i swear by this treatment. It worked wonderfully for my silkies. One tip is to have patience be cause it does take a good month to completely cure and in that time she might need help drinking and eating depending on the severity of her case. With all three my birds had severe wry neck where they flopped over and would get stuck and head and neck was badly twisted. So they needed the extra help be cause they could not walk in a forward direction. With wry neck it might get worse before it gets better and can manafiest many different symptoms. Symptoms as you described and it can manafiest waking backward or circles. Falling over and loosing ability to walk in my birds I noticed seizure activity. Luckily this treatment successfully cured all three. Even in their severe condition. All cases took about a good month to completely cure. Basically Alans treatment is vitamin E and small amount of selenium vitamin B liquid children's vitamin polyvisol without iron and prednisone. The prednisone helps reduce the brain swelling and should be used with cation and not abruptly stopped but rather weaned off. The Web site will explain this in more detail. Many don't use the prednisone but I used it in all three cases with great success. Also after she is better consider a good poultry vitamin with E in it as a preventive be cause wry neck can return. I use a vitamin A D E and B packet to supplement my silkies with now.to help prevent wry neck. This can be caused from a vitamin deficiency or Injury to the skull or genetics. Wry neck it's self is not a disease but a symptom brought on by one of those causes.i hope this is helpful and wish you the best. I've had great success by following Alan Stanfords treatment plan. I followed it to a tee and was able to completely cure my birds. I highly recommend it for your bird as well if in fact she has wry neck. Which according to your symptoms sounds very likely. Best of luck and hope this is helpful.