Hello all!
My aged rooster has been limping for over a month now. At first, I treated him for leg mites. When he didn't improve, I took him to the vet, and they did all sorts of tests (blood and poo came back clean), they gave him antibiotics (oxytetracycline), anti-inflammatory drugs (oral meloxicam for over a week and 3 metacam injections) and pain meds (dipyrone), but nothing helped, not even a little. Now they say there's no more they can do and it's probably old age, but it breaks my heart to see my boy like this.
He's eating well, I've been giving him a vitamin complex to boost his nutrition a bit, he crows (sometimes without standing up tough) and do some normal rooster stuff like caring for his hens, and "jumps" around the farm on one leg to go to one place or another. But mostly, he just lies down in the shade.
He's a rescue so I don't know how old he is, but we estimate over 6 years old. The limping was progressive, it started as a weird walk and just got worse and worse until he couldn't stand on that leg at all. He has a callus on the other leg due to an old bumblefoot that was not treated (from before he was rescued), and the vet couldn't remove the callus, he says it might have made my boy require too much of the other leg and now the joints are suffering for it. And his joints do crack. He also had his spurs trimmed at the vet a couple of weeks before the limping was noticeable, and it bled.
So I do think it might be a tendon or joints issue, but what puzzles me is that the pain meds and anti-inflammatory drugs didn't help at all.
Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe restrict him to a pen? Try different pain meds? Can chickens take chondroitin, glicosamine, hyaluronic acid and stuff like that?
Thank you all in advance!
My aged rooster has been limping for over a month now. At first, I treated him for leg mites. When he didn't improve, I took him to the vet, and they did all sorts of tests (blood and poo came back clean), they gave him antibiotics (oxytetracycline), anti-inflammatory drugs (oral meloxicam for over a week and 3 metacam injections) and pain meds (dipyrone), but nothing helped, not even a little. Now they say there's no more they can do and it's probably old age, but it breaks my heart to see my boy like this.
He's eating well, I've been giving him a vitamin complex to boost his nutrition a bit, he crows (sometimes without standing up tough) and do some normal rooster stuff like caring for his hens, and "jumps" around the farm on one leg to go to one place or another. But mostly, he just lies down in the shade.
He's a rescue so I don't know how old he is, but we estimate over 6 years old. The limping was progressive, it started as a weird walk and just got worse and worse until he couldn't stand on that leg at all. He has a callus on the other leg due to an old bumblefoot that was not treated (from before he was rescued), and the vet couldn't remove the callus, he says it might have made my boy require too much of the other leg and now the joints are suffering for it. And his joints do crack. He also had his spurs trimmed at the vet a couple of weeks before the limping was noticeable, and it bled.
So I do think it might be a tendon or joints issue, but what puzzles me is that the pain meds and anti-inflammatory drugs didn't help at all.
Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe restrict him to a pen? Try different pain meds? Can chickens take chondroitin, glicosamine, hyaluronic acid and stuff like that?
Thank you all in advance!
