Peachick with slipped tendon

[new 2 pfowl]

I missed this too, great work @Garden Peas !

 

[Garden Peas]

So glad to hear he has recovered! And thank you so much for such a detailed post! Had a chick born with a slipped tendon and will be trying the tape and splint! Hope I have as much success as you have.

Good luck! Hope it works out

I think usually when you see an issue at birth, it is more likely to be a splayed leg, but could happen either way -- make sure to check and try to figure out for sure exactly where the problem is.

The really key difference was the way the vet applied the tape to the joint -- that made a big difference in the outcome. Using two flat pieces rather than wrapping around really helped. Kathy @casportpony posted something on leg fractures the other day, and that vet used a similar technique -- that would be worth looking at for sure.

And also, while I wish it were in better circumstances, welcome to the peafowl forum!

 

[Garden Peas]

I missed this too, great work @Garden Peas !

Thanks new 2 -- it was really the vet... I just took pictures of her work after my own failed

 

[Jennifer Cappi Williams]

I am struggling with my extra tiny silkie runt Minion. It has a slipped tendon from birth. I have taken to the vet for the first wrap and I am not so sure if my re-wrap is at all helpful. I need to learn to do this...

 

[VansBantams]

So here's the scoop on Monday's vet visit.

First, just getting a two week-old peachick safely to the vet (this particular vet happens to be 45+ minutes away from the house) was challenging. These chicks are still brooding with a heat lamp, and are not ready to be running around in cool-ish room temperatures, and definitely not ready for a couple of hours (round trip + wait time + exam time) away from a heat source. Plus it's a peachick, so #5 can already fly a bit.

I rigged up a travel box out of a big plastic box with a lid, a heating pad, a thermometer and a thick, folded towel (to keep the heating pad from burning the chick). I ran the heating pad in the box for an hour or two, trying different settings to see what was warm enough but not too warm, before adding the chick. (You have to give the heating pad a little while to work and steady out before you can really tell what it is going to do!)





Despite all that prep, still had to watch the little guy kinda closely -- the car was hot when we got in, and I didn't want to freeze him out with too much air conditioning, because I couldn't plug the heating pad in and heat him back up in the car (forgot the fancy AC adapter thingy). But he started panting from getting too hot, so we popped up the lid and watched the thermometer to get him to a more comfortable range.

Here he is in his box (this was actually on the way home) -- he was pretty okay with it.



This vet was unclear on surgery for slipped tendon -- she had never heard of it, and wasn't looking to experiment. I think this may have been her first peafowl, and I don't think she has attempted to treat slipped tendons much, if ever. With that said, she obviously has splinted many bird legs in the past, so she was able to improvise something that worked.

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to videotape or take pictures as she was building up the splint with layers of tape, but I had to wait to take photos until I got #5 back home. I'll try to describe her technique after the photos.

This first photo is taken from the side of the chick, looking at the leg from the outside:



Here is a closeup of the tape "splint" from approximately the same angle:



Here is the splint from the front showing the thin edge:



The first thing she did was to tape the tendon back into place. Her technique was better than mine and she used a softer tape than I had had on hand. Using a fairly narrow (not too skinny) piece of soft, flexible cloth tape, she applied the tape below the hock joint, and then around the joint itself, holding the tendon in the groove on the back of the hock. She did not attempt to tape up above the hock joint, and she did put tape directly ON the hock joint, both of which I had avoided doing. But her way worked better than what I had tried. I do think she was careful to avoid overtightening the tape and avoid cutting off circulation -- it's a little tricky to get it tight enough but not too tight, and some experience obviously helps. Also, having very good tape is a plus.

She then created a "splint" out of cloth tape. She started with a wider cloth tape -- perhaps 1" or 1 1/2" wide, woven cloth bandage tape. It was flexible, but perhaps not as flexible as the thin stuff. That's the wide stuff you see in the photos. She cut two pieces and placed them like the sides of an envelope on the outside and inside of the leg. Imagine that the knife edge of the envelope is facing forwards (aligned with the center toe). That allowed her to put a small flex in the joint and hold the tendon in place at the same time, but did not allow the joint to bend or flex. (But see update info farther down.) I am not certain if she added another piece or two in that layer -- I kinda think she may just have used one on each side, but she mentioned that sometimes she builds up layers.

After she had the two sides of the envelope stuck together, with the leg gently bent forward at the hock joint, she took bandage scissors and trimmed away part of the excess tape so the "envelope" was no longer a fat rectangle. Working first on the front, knife edge of the envelope, she placed smaller bits of the tape across the knife edge, covering it, and lapping the tape onto (but not completely around) the two sides of the envelope. As she did that on the front, she very neatly managed to incorporate a slight inward bend, matching the natural position of a chick's lower leg. (If you look carefully at a normal leg, it flexes in two directions at the hock -- part of why that is such a vulnerable joint -- the leg swings forward from the hock, but also inwards so the feet are a bit closer together than the hocks.) She managed to get that slight twist just right, and somehow the little strips lapping the knife edge helped her shape it. Likewise, she put little tape strips lapping the back knife edge as well. These little tape strips not only added the twist shaping, but also strengthened the envelope and helped hold the two sides of the envelope from coming apart.

The chick was definitely not crazy about it, and didn't know how to use the leg. He tried all sorts of things, and even had some little leg spasms to the rear. I thought he was going to splay himself again. He was happiest in the car going home when he could support himself on the cradled up towel. The vet and I discussed putting a hobble on it -- she thought that might help. However, later I discovered that wasn't going to work.

When I got him home, I tried another round of chick chair. I made a height extension for it and got the chick all installed and back into the brooder. He seemed like he was doing okay.

I got home and discovered -- disaster! -- he had somehow flipped the chick chair, struggled out of his glove and his wing wrap, and dragged himself to the other end of the brooder, where he looked pretty darned exhausted. (I have this great mental image of his buddies mounting a rescue to flip the chair, but I kinda doubt it

). That was pretty worrisome, and definitely not safe, so I thought I better just let him rest and see how he did. I was also worried about his toes drawing up, because it seemed as though he was ending up using the tops of his foot to walk on. Notice that the splint has the leg mostly extended, so it does not fit well underneath the chick. When he was tired, the good leg was pretty worn out from all the "day" he had had. He obviously needed to rest. I syringe fed him some pedialyte to make sure he wasn't dehydrating, and let him be.

At some point, he seems to have "sprung" his splint a bit, and he is now much more mobile on it. He has the lower part of the splint pushed apart enough that he has more use of the leg. In particularly good news, he has the toes working properly, foot in the correct orientation, and either the tendon is still in place or the splint is providing enough support that he is able to bear weight on the leg to hobble around. I kinda think that the tendon must still be in place, otherwise I think it would collapse.

So at this point, I am hoping that the groove is growing and that he is staying supported where it needs to be. I'm leaving the bandage alone (the foot looks healthy and a good color), and I'm just watching to make sure he stays hydrated and fed and is getting around okay. In a few more days, I'll have to take the bandage off (if he doesn't completely bust it first!) and then assess where he is. It's probably still too soon to become optimistic -- it's just one day at a time and seeing how he does.

The tape "splint" is definitely worth trying though -- much better than anything I have seen so far.

Would you recommend putting the chick in a chair or just let the chick move around freely with the bandage on? I have two three week old Guinea Keets that have this issue but their legs are straight back behind them and I cannot feel the tendon rolling around on bad legs.

 

[KsKingBee]

That doesn't sound like a tendon problem, more like a hip out of joint. I would bind it into a full sitting position for a day with its hocks up against its breast. You could try this with the addition of taping the chick down to the cardboard.

 

[pine45]

PART 2 -- BUILDING A CHICK SLING/ CHICK CHAIR

The chick needs to stay off the tendon while it heals. There's some conflict in what I've read -- some folks recommend keeping all weight off, other suggest the bird should be able to touch toes and get a little flexion. After experimenting with it, I think they were dealing with birds less strong than peafowl. Do not underestimate how strongly a peachick can spring, even with one leg out of commission. They have explosive jumping power (more on that later).

Fortunately, I had just looked up a bunch of old chicken threads about chick chairs a week and a half ago, while still dealing with the spraddle/ splayed leg issue. So I thought I had a good idea of how to do it. However it took quite a bit of tinkering to get it functional.

I started with an empty, quart-sized yogurt container and a pair of ultra-cheap cotton garden gloves (about $1/pair at Home Depot), and the ubiquitous duct tape. I was going to try to use the hot glue gun, but the duct tape got the job done, so I'm keeping the glue gun in reserve for the next model.



You can see that I cut down the yogurt container to make it shorter, and I put some duct tape on the bottom. Well, that didn't work. The yogurt container was too short, and I didn't like the tape because I thought it could catch pea toes (bad).

We worked on the gloves for a little while before cutting down another yogurt container (Container #2). First, I cut the wrists off of the glove:



Then I cut the glove up the center to cut off the two outside fingers and cut the ends off those fingers:



Also had to cut an opening for tail feathers and vent:



We worked this onto the chick (two people is a huge asset at this step), and tried to figure out how to suspend it from the yogurt container. By now, we knew that the whole bottom needed to come out of the container, and it only needed to be cut down a little in length. But when we tried to suspend the glove, it was too lopsided. So I used the second glove (good thing they come in pairs) and cut off the ends of the middle two fingers, and we tried suspending the chick with that. Notice the chick still needs a tail hole:





Chick #5 looked totally adorable in his little jumpsuit, but when we tried to hang it in the cup, the chick used his toes to grab those other fingers/thumb of the glove and eject himself. So I had to trim off all the fingers and thumb of the glove to stop him from escaping. Here, I'm working to position the glove around the outer edge of the yogurt container, which has already had the bottom cut out:



Here's Chick #5 taking a quick nap while we figured out how to attach food and water cups. The glove has been taped down with duct tape, and the chick is stable.



We got the food and water cups taped down with duct tape (I thought we would figure out how to change/maintain them later), added food and water (I'm now using pedialyte), and got ready to move the chick back to the brooder. We used little liquid medicine cups like the ones that come on liquid ibuprofen or tylenol.

At that point, chick #5 woke up. As I was reaching for the cell phone to take a picture of the finished chick chair, chick #5 used his mighty pea legs to do one of those amazing pea-springs (peas are SUCH good jumpers

) and he launched himself, yogurt container, chick starter crumbles, water and all, headfirst up and over into my lap.

After @PeaLover130 stopped laughing long enough to breathe, she fetched me lots of paper towels, and I tried to mop up one-handed while still holding the cup so that chick #5 didn't launch himself head-first into the floor. My helper was still laughing hysterically, so wasn't much help.

We then started over with yogurt container #3, now having learned that cutting any height at all off the container was too much, and that suspending the chick by the glove may be a better future option. After cutting the bottom out, we gently detached the glove (chick and all) and moved it over into the latest yogurt container. Also fiddled a bit with the chick's position when taping down the glove.



Then duct-taped down the food and water containers. Having discovered that the chick could launch the entire chick chair with vigor, we decided to add a roll cage to provide a little more stability. So we plunked the entire set-up into an empty coffee canister. (Okay, I've just given every hoarder on the peafowl forum a new reason to save leftover junk, right?) Here's chick #5, finally ready to be tucked back in the brooder:



Here's a picture of chick #5 parked in the brooder today:



After I took this photo, I ended up taking all the water out of the little medication cup, and I added a second medication cup, just stacked into the first one, with pedialyte. That way I can slip it in and out to clean it and refill it without disturbing the whole set up. There was quite a lot of consternation around the time I took this picture, as new peachicks #7-10 had just joined #5 & 6 in the warmer brooder, and the bigger chicks, #2-4, had just joined chick #1, Mikey, for the first time. Boy oh boy, was everyone upset!

I've checked the leg a couple times today, still looks okay. We'll try some physical therapy tomorrow to see if it stays in the groove when I flex it. It's a tough thing, because if it pops out too much, it will never heal correctly, but if it is immobilized for too long without stretching it, it will become too short and the bird will not have use of the leg. So I'm going to try stabilizing it for 24 - 36 hours to let it heal a bit, then start the stretching and flexing. We'll see if the tape helps hold it in place at that point. I understand there's a surgical repair that can be done -- I'm hoping if this ends up not working that we won't be too late for surgery as long as it's been correctly positioned in the meantime.

Anyway, we'll see if this works

This is the best coverage on peachick legproblem!

 

[pine45]

This is the best coverage on peachick leg problem! I am over my head trying help my three week old chick! Have tried to rectify splay leg, but looks more complicated than pictured splay leg. I live in Illinois and having great difficulty finding help!!

 

[KsKingBee]

I am glad you found this thread!

 

[pine45]

PART 2 -- BUILDING A CHICK SLING/ CHICK CHAIR

The chick needs to stay off the tendon while it heals. There's some conflict in what I've read -- some folks recommend keeping all weight off, other suggest the bird should be able to touch toes and get a little flexion. After experimenting with it, I think they were dealing with birds less strong than peafowl. Do not underestimate how strongly a peachick can spring, even with one leg out of commission. They have explosive jumping power (more on that later).

Fortunately, I had just looked up a bunch of old chicken threads about chick chairs a week and a half ago, while still dealing with the spraddle/ splayed leg issue. So I thought I had a good idea of how to do it. However it took quite a bit of tinkering to get it functional.

I started with an empty, quart-sized yogurt container and a pair of ultra-cheap cotton garden gloves (about $1/pair at Home Depot), and the ubiquitous duct tape. I was going to try to use the hot glue gun, but the duct tape got the job done, so I'm keeping the glue gun in reserve for the next model.



You can see that I cut down the yogurt container to make it shorter, and I put some duct tape on the bottom. Well, that didn't work. The yogurt container was too short, and I didn't like the tape because I thought it could catch pea toes (bad).

We worked on the gloves for a little while before cutting down another yogurt container (Container #2). First, I cut the wrists off of the glove:



Then I cut the glove up the center to cut off the two outside fingers and cut the ends off those fingers:



Also had to cut an opening for tail feathers and vent:



We worked this onto the chick (two people is a huge asset at this step), and tried to figure out how to suspend it from the yogurt container. By now, we knew that the whole bottom needed to come out of the container, and it only needed to be cut down a little in length. But when we tried to suspend the glove, it was too lopsided. So I used the second glove (good thing they come in pairs) and cut off the ends of the middle two fingers, and we tried suspending the chick with that. Notice the chick still needs a tail hole:





Chick #5 looked totally adorable in his little jumpsuit, but when we tried to hang it in the cup, the chick used his toes to grab those other fingers/thumb of the glove and eject himself. So I had to trim off all the fingers and thumb of the glove to stop him from escaping. Here, I'm working to position the glove around the outer edge of the yogurt container, which has already had the bottom cut out:



Here's Chick #5 taking a quick nap while we figured out how to attach food and water cups. The glove has been taped down with duct tape, and the chick is stable.



We got the food and water cups taped down with duct tape (I thought we would figure out how to change/maintain them later), added food and water (I'm now using pedialyte), and got ready to move the chick back to the brooder. We used little liquid medicine cups like the ones that come on liquid ibuprofen or tylenol.

At that point, chick #5 woke up. As I was reaching for the cell phone to take a picture of the finished chick chair, chick #5 used his mighty pea legs to do one of those amazing pea-springs (peas are SUCH good jumpers

) and he launched himself, yogurt container, chick starter crumbles, water and all, headfirst up and over into my lap.

After @PeaLover130 stopped laughing long enough to breathe, she fetched me lots of paper towels, and I tried to mop up one-handed while still holding the cup so that chick #5 didn't launch himself head-first into the floor. My helper was still laughing hysterically, so wasn't much help.

We then started over with yogurt container #3, now having learned that cutting any height at all off the container was too much, and that suspending the chick by the glove may be a better future option. After cutting the bottom out, we gently detached the glove (chick and all) and moved it over into the latest yogurt container. Also fiddled a bit with the chick's position when taping down the glove.



Then duct-taped down the food and water containers. Having discovered that the chick could launch the entire chick chair with vigor, we decided to add a roll cage to provide a little more stability. So we plunked the entire set-up into an empty coffee canister. (Okay, I've just given every hoarder on the peafowl forum a new reason to save leftover junk, right?) Here's chick #5, finally ready to be tucked back in the brooder:



Here's a picture of chick #5 parked in the brooder today:



After I took this photo, I ended up taking all the water out of the little medication cup, and I added a second medication cup, just stacked into the first one, with pedialyte. That way I can slip it in and out to clean it and refill it without disturbing the whole set up. There was quite a lot of consternation around the time I took this picture, as new peachicks #7-10 had just joined #5 & 6 in the warmer brooder, and the bigger chicks, #2-4, had just joined chick #1, Mikey, for the first time. Boy oh boy, was everyone upset!

I've checked the leg a couple times today, still looks okay. We'll try some physical therapy tomorrow to see if it stays in the groove when I flex it. It's a tough thing, because if it pops out too much, it will never heal correctly, but if it is immobilized for too long without stretching it, it will become too short and the bird will not have use of the leg. So I'm going to try stabilizing it for 24 - 36 hours to let it heal a bit, then start the stretching and flexing. We'll see if the tape helps hold it in place at that point. I understand there's a surgical repair that can be done -- I'm hoping if this ends up not working that we won't be too late for surgery as long as it's been correctly positioned in the meantime.

Anyway, we'll see if this works

Outstanding photos!