Official BYC Poll: Special Needs Poultry

[casportpony]

She normally walks just fine on the stubs. She does flap her wings to help her go faster if she wants to run towards something. Like a treat lol.

She does occasionally get pressure sores. When she does I use vet wrap and gauze to make like a sock that covers her stump and up her legs. She used to have the little wrap socks on all the time. I would change them every few days or so because the wound of when her feet fell off kept opening up and I wanted to avoid infection.

When we first took the wraps off after she was healed it was only a few days and she had pressure sores. I hadn't thought about her getting sores. So after that we would only let her go a day or less without the wraps to slowly build up thicker skin.

Bookmarking this. This could be very helpful to someone dealing with the loss of a foot or feet.

 

[Pumphrey]

Mine got kicked by a horse and fractured her femur. It was brought to the vet to be put down but the vet thought she could save it. She put a pin in it and then gave her to me. The original owner also gave me her sister for a companion. I have had her for a year and she walks with a limp but is my alpha hen.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I've had several over the years. If a bird is not suffering, then I at least try to give them as much of a chance as I can. I think the most severe has been Perdita, a Red Dorking with a deformed leg she's had since she was days old. She hobbles around on it, but can't bend it to perch or sit properly and can't really put any weight on it. But she hops up to the dropping trays on her own to sleep at night, hobbles around the yard, gets plenty to eat and drink, and seems perfectly happy despite it. As of yesterday, she's even adopted three 6-week-old chicks whose mother stopped mothering them recently. I'd never let her brood before for fear she would accidentally crush eggs or tiny chicks, but these guys are bigger and more mobile than newly hatched babes and they seem to do fine with her, even tucking under her wing periodically.

Beyond that, I've seen other leg issues, curled toes, blindness, minor crooked beaks, injuries, even one little hen I was given who had been debeaked so extremely that she basically didn't have an upper mandible. All did fine living out their lives just being chickens.

 

[2ndTink]

My pullet isn't severely disabled but, I have a 19 week old SLW pullet who I noticed had balance issues at about 4 or 5 weeks old. She was very unsteady and moved oddly. After a lot of vitamins and advice from others on this forum, she's much improved. She wasn't able to roost until she was older and had trouble with the ramp into the coop. She is doing really well now, if you watch her you can still see she's not quite normal, I've never seen her dust bath and she cant quite keep her balabce enough to do any stretching. She also has always had a dent in her head, her comb has developed around it.

 

[Shabby Chic-Hens]

Oh, and my aunt also has a blind rooster

 

[janiedoe]

I have an 8yo hen that is blind. She does pretty well. Her flock helps her find water and food. They even encourage and call to her at roost time. She can get onto the roost, but I do take her off in the mornings.

I have 3 chicks from 7 to 9 1/2 weeks that are special needs. I'm hoping it isn't permanent. I've been treating four of them, inside the house, for around 2 and half to 3 weeks. One fully recovered.
I think my problems were caused by older feed. I ran out of my usual feed and couldn't get it, so I bought some elsewhere. It wasn't dated. After using most of two 50lb bags I noticed problems. I called the manufacturer and found out that the feed was almost 11 mo old. On top of that, we've had triple digit temps.
Hope is 9.5 weeks, at around 4 weeks I noticed she wasn't walking. I took her inside and treated her for spraddle leg and curled toes. She seemed to recover fine, but then relapsed. She is doing better and can stand now, with support.
Tommie is 7 weeks. She fully recovered. She was found collapsed in the run.
A few days later I took 2 more chicks (all of the 7 week olds have the same bio mom and dad) from the same mama hen. Both were unable to walk.
Right now my days are spent catering to these 3 baby chicks.
I hope Hope will make a full recovery as Tommie did.
Dill is doing much better but I'm having trouble straightening his foot and toes.
Nessy doesn't have any deformities or noticeable symptoms but she is still very week and has to be encouraged to eat. She seems to be the most fragile of the group.

 

[Tookie]

My special needs chicken is my 1 1/2yo Dominique, Angel.
A few days after I got her in the mail, I noticed her right wing was hanging down, and the feathers were sticking out.

A bit hard to see here, but you can kinda see how her wing was as a 3 day old chick.

At 3 weeks old, her wing looked like this.

At around 6 weeks old, she started falling on her back and wasn't able to get up. I was thinking she was tripping on her wing. So I started wrapping her wing up, to get it out of her way, and also cause I was thinking she had angel wing. (Which is where she gets her name from.) I had quite a bit of trouble wrapping her wing up, and it was very frustrating.
Since she had issues with falling on her back, she's actually been on two vacations with me! I was so worried about leaving her alone, and falling on her back on not making it.
She did grow out of falling on her back, and I haven't found her like that in awhile, I do still worry about it a bit though.

Here she is at 6 weeks old, with her wing wrapped up.

Eventually, I gave up on wrapping her wing, and ended up cutting her feathers.

At 9 weeks old I did take her to the vet and got her wing checked out, I was told she probably broke her wing and it didn't heal correctly.

This is her now, a healthy and happy little hen! She's by far my friendliest and attention seeking chicken.

 

[WhiteCollarWeezy]

Countrix quail Millsap. Passed recently. The 1st batch I ever hatched. He was blind with eyes so pink I could almost see through to the other side. I figured out he was blind whenever he kept running over the other babies like they weren't there. He also didn't eat until I sprinkled food on his feet. He always reacted to my voice and touch.

 

[TwoCrows]

How did you accommodate the blindness? And how did you provide heat?

What were they like after the strokes?


So sorry for your loss.

Miss Molly before she went blind, unfortunately I don't have any photos of her eyes at the blindness stage. Her eyes started going cloudy one day. The vet gave me antibiotic eye drops thinking it could have been an infection, but the eyes continued to go white.

I don't think she was totally blind as I believe could see shadows somewhat, but both her eyes were pretty white. She continuously stayed in this corner next to this mirror just like this old bird here (This is Hilda, not Miss Molly)...

I watered Miss Molly with a large bowl (chicken waterers were too narrow for her to find) I had an old fish tank aerator and stuck the plastic tube inside the water bowl so the bubbles made noise. She could then locate the water. I spread chicken feed at her feet on a similar towel in this photo, so she could always find food. The others were always eating her food so I had to be vigilant and keep spreading more food for Miss Molly.

Miss Molly was the first bird to have a stroke, which I think the blindness was related. Her right wing started drooping, then she started limping on her right foot, eventually her toes curled under and she struggled to walk, she had tremors as well. All this stroke talk...FYI to all reading, it turns out the well water I was watering my entire flock was too high in sodium and it gave them all heart disease. Some died young from heart disease, others went on to over come it once I got them on RO water, living long lives.

As for heat and old birds, all birds in my flock over 10 seem to need heat in the winter. Like old people, all of them lost muscle mass, had arthritis, could hardly stand in the morning, and they get extremely scary thin. Old birds do not have a hardy appetite. If the temps were going to get below 20F at night, I used an infra red heat lamp on them, a white infra red during the day. Old birds will freeze to death if they can not generate heat.

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

Pictures?

I have to look for some in my phone

How are you treating the wry neck

We treated it with vitamin E in mash for just her, everyday till it was gone. She's 99% better now

& splay leg?

We used a splay leg brace from Amazon while she was little for 4 or 5 days