Misaligned beak

[Michar]

DH brought home a chick with a misaligned beak.

I wouldn't have brought it home, but now that she's here I feel an obligation to her if there is anything that can be done. I think she's around 3 weeks old, and survived so far without a lot of special attention but she's constantly trying to eat, every time I check on them she's at the trough.

Her beak is so off that they don't even touch, it looks like a V.

I'm going to try to get a photo of her later, but so far she's been camera shy turning away and not letting me get a good picture of it.

 

[Michar]

It's a bad cell phone picture, but here she is

 

[kyrose]

i dont think theres much you can do but ill give you a bump and maybe someone can give you some good advice.good luck with the little one..

 

[lemurchaser]

Wow that's really far off. Can you move the top and bottom together into a normal alignment at all? Or are they stuck that way? I've fixed a mild misalignment, but I don't know about one that bad. I might try lengths of rubber band from the top to the bottom (superglued), to try to pull it into better alignment. Or a soft band over it for a few hours on, a few hours off type deal. My motto with chicks with weirdness is to give them a chance. She seems to be holding her own, you might experiment and see if an open bowl is easier for her to eat out of, or if the food is moistened.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Really, really sad....my mom used to come home from the feed store with the chickens that were either blind or had deformed beaks. She would keep them in a cage in the house (she also had an outside pen for them) and she would hand feed them. She'd make a mixture, roll it into balls and feed them to the chickens one at a time. Some she'd have to pry their mouths open for the first one or two until they caught on. It was a lot of work and she arranged her entire schedule around the chickens. No one in my family thought it was weird to hear my mom say, "I gotta get going to feed the chicken." I don't think that I could be that committed. Avian vets cost an arm and a leg, but a lot of the large animal vets give advice for free...it's worth trying to call one and see if they have any recommendations.