Official BYC Poll: Special Needs Poultry

[casportpony]

I did make a post about one of my disabled birds here and I have two others right now that I did not mention

We can track these threads too!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b4xYtRRF-h3beOZagfDlB4zaa058r20ehIW_FG93xEA/edit?usp=sharing

 

[kurby22]

Yeah, I can see the value of a place to go for disabled birds. I have a chicken friend who has a Serama that is having seizures and needs constant care and she spends a ton of time searching for ideas to help her keep the baby comfortable and well fed.

I would have loved to have more places to talk about Nohope and ways to try rehab to strengthen his legs. My blind girl needed special feeders, I went out daily to make sure she found the feed once a day, she came inside in really hot days, needed help going to bed if it got too dark before she could find her way to her coop. The support from others dealing with similar issues would have been nice!

 

[triciayoung]

I did make a post about one of my disabled birds here and I have two others right now that I did not mention (more than if you count the geriatric birds I have), plus have had several in the past, so I am not entirely in the dark about what people with disabled birds go through, for the record. I've been on BYC for a very long time at this point and have checked the forums pretty much daily that entire time. People do post about their disabled birds. Just not that many people, not that often. I just don't see how that's enough for an entire forum for them when a subforum or even a pinned thread would seem like plenty of space for that.

I get what you are saying and I know you know what you are doing...I am just saying that there really isn't a reason to bring it up. As an example, my Grace is 26 weeks old. Only one person on BYC has known that she is disabled before the topic came up a few days ago. There just isn't reason to bring it up in the posts because it doesn't come up often. But now, that @casportpony is asking, it is coming up a lot more than I thought it would.

The greeters hear about disabled birds more often, but only because people are introducing themselves and their flocks. I would say we hear about disabled birds, either in conjunction with rescues - or not, maybe 1 out of every 20 new members. Any greeter feel free to provide your opinion about if this statistic is correct.

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

I think I've mentioned I had a disable chicken before but I never felt there was anywhere in particular that was suited to discussion about her, or if there was anyone even interested in talking about her
I think I'm also a little hesitant to talk about her in case someone tells me she'd be better off dead.
I don't mind a thread but also like the idea of at least a subforum.
Thanks to the staff for doing this thread though and keeping a list of links!

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

I think a forum or subforum would be great! About half of my rescued pigeons are disabled (https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/rubber-band-wrapped-around-leg-of-pigeon.1494608/), and I would love to share advice and learn more about how others keep their disabled birds.

 

[StardustChicken]

Another: Balinda the cross beaked Brahma. She's currently 3 and a half weeks old now and extremely friendly. She loves following me around half the time and takes every opportunity to run up into my hands

 

[casportpony]

Another one of mine is a 2021 peacock with one wing. He severely injured it when he was a few months old, and I had to amputate it. With only one wing, he cannot fly up to the normal perch, so we made one he can hop on.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I think the reason why many of you don’t see how many of us are dealing with disabled birds, is because there is not a place to go for us to discuss solutions, increasing the birds quality of life ideas, and time-saving ideas for the chicken keeper. So those of us with these birds do the best we can and creatively figure it out.

I agree with this. I thought about posting about my far-sighted hen Dingus a couple times. This was back when she was still a poor pullet smacking roost bars with her neck and face-planting into the side of my leg when trying to get to my lap. I considered the chicken behaviors section, but was worried I'd just get told to cull since I didn't think people would believe my diagnosis of what was wrong with that hen.

I imagine there might be a lot of posts in such a section that aren't about a "true" long term special needs case, but how would you know with some birds when it's early on? Maybe they will go back to normal life somehow, maybe not. Sometimes I think it could be useful to get feedback on the weirder cases just as preparation for a worst case. I had a chick that broke bones in her upper and lower jaw during hatch and was worried about scissor beak with her for months (she's fine - beak eventually grew out beautifully straight). Fortunately scissor beak is one where there are loads of threads scattered around and also articles, but I might have started a thread to discuss that case if a section had existed.

 

[triciayoung]

I think I've mentioned I had a disable chicken before but I never felt there was anywhere in particular that was suited to discussion about her, or if there was anyone even interested in talking about her
I think I'm also a little hesitant to talk about her in case someone tells me she'd be better off dead.
I don't mind a thread but also like the idea of at least a subforum.
Thanks to the staff for doing this thread though and keeping a list of links!

I am so happy you said this....I feel the same way. Thank you.

 

[chicken-tender]

Just my two cents since I have not had a bird with a disability yet.. I read many threads, forums just for info as I am sure many do. I am all for a forum on this subject. Not only will the rest of us learn things so we are prepared if/when we encounter something similar, but we also may have something to add that would be helpful. For instance, with blind chickens, I have not seen anything about sound training. Maybe a bell on a timer that rang in the evening to guide the bird to the coop or roost or different ones on the feeder and waterer that sounded through out the day and were silent at night? I don't think it would be hard set something like that up. Knowing how chickens learn things fairly quickly it should work. There are other ideas that might help with mobility. Just a few thoughts.