paralyzed/weak chick, please help!!

[aymer]

on thursday evening i noticed one of the chicks (7 weeks old) seemed to be a bit sluggish. i held her for a minute and put her back in with the rest of the peeps and she seemed good (eating, drinking, running around with her brothers and sisters). the next morning my husband let the peeps out after i had left and he said spot staggered out of the pen but seemed ok a few minutes later. two hours later ben, my husband, went out to check on them and he found spot pinned beneath one of our hens getting her eyes pecked out!!

ben chucked the hen and brought spot in the house, cleaned the blood off of her face, gave her some water (she would drink if you put her beak in the bowl), put her on a clean towel under a heat lamp. at this point he thought she was missing one eye. i came home a few hours later and made her eggs (which i could not get her to eat) and held her for a few hours. i got her drink a few beak full of water every hour and to eat a bite of scrambled eggs last night.

today - she is still alive! but seems almost paralyzed? she still cannot stand and topples over every time she tries to stand. she is eating and drinking (not a lot but a little). i am not sure if she is blind but i can see both of her eyes today.

any thoughts? is there anything i can give her to help? is there a chicken disease where the chicks get weak? the rest of the flock (7 chicks and 5 hens) is doing great.

thanks for any advise!

 

[crazy chook]

I would start by putting electrolytes in the water and some vitamins. See if that perks her up a bit, also check for mites etc. She could just be at the bottom of the pecking order and be picked on quite a bit.

I hope she pulls through.

 

[aymer]

thanks for your advise. i added electrolytes and garlic powder (i read that on another post) to her water but it does not seem to be helping. i am still force feeding her. she is still unable to control her legs. she is propping herself into a corner of a box in order to sit up without falling over...

 

[shaft0463]

I have had a couple who have done this. My advice is to worm her and add a bit of antibiotics to her water, and then let her rest if she wants. Make sure she has access to a good-quality feed, and put her up and stick her beak in the water every couple hours. It's best to keep them out of the heat if it's very hot where you are.

I've had some perk back up after several days of being nursed back to health, and a couple that didn't make it. Most of them never get sick, or they might get just a bit weak, but they can come back from being pretty pathetic. We named the last one Lucky, as in, it was lucky I didn't put it down because I thought there was NO WAY it would pull through.

 

[aymer]

thank you for the hope! we named this one spot because she has dark spots in on her feathers. she is very cute. how do you de-worm a chicken? what kind of antibiotics should i try to get?