My odd little physically challenged chick

This chick is actually MUCH improved. When she arrived, we were a heartbeat away from culling her, but decided to watch awhile first. She could not stand up on her feet at all, and was always tail-up, face-down like this. (ETA--not with legs spread apart sideways, like spraddle-leg.) The only way she could move about was to use her tiny little WINGS as "crutches." I am not even kidding.

We're not big on heroic measures when it comes to survival of the fittest livestock, but we're not cull-happy, either, and she didn't have any apparent pain or distress--she didn't know there was anything wrong with how she was.

As long as she was able to eat and drink by herself, we decided to just watch and wait. Now, a week later, she still can't quite stand up straight like the others, but she CAN lift herself up off the bedding and stand in a kind of crouch, and she can now walk and even run short distances using just her feet and legs, without hock-walking or using her wings as crutches.

When resting, the tail-up posture remains predominant.

I really pretty much expect her to make a full recovery at this point. And also to make a fool of me by proving to be a boy.

 

No--it may appear so in the pic, but they don't go to the side at all. She was down on her hocks, actually, but no sideways spreading. At first we did try to brace her little hocks a bit with bandaids, but that totally incapacitated her, because she HAD to stand/sit on them, so they had to be completely folded.

What you see here is actually a vast improvement, because she's straightening her legs a *little*, and she's clearing the bedding!

 

Thanks--that was the first thing we looked up, because it was the ONLY leg problem I knew about! We couldn't find anything that matched this bit of weirdness.

 

Quote:This is just pine shavings. I keep it pretty deep, so I don't have to be cleaning it all the time. We have a semi-detached basement that is finished and heated/cooled (it was the family's "play room" for the last owner, and had darts and games and things), and floored in linoleum. SO, when chicks are coming, we just clear a patch of clean floor, put down a cardboard brooder-guard, and dump several inches of shavings into the "circle" (I use quotation marks because it only resembles a circle in the loosest sense--it's more like an amoeba ). Then we put an ex-pen or a circle of chicken wire around that before anyone gets big enough to flap 12 inches vertically.