Please help - my baby has splayed legs......

[lillie]

I have a young bird that has splayed legs. (The bird is a bob-white not a chicken but this board has so much good info I am hoping someone can help.) He or she is six weeks old and the problem just developed. I have seen pictures of a splint, however I can't remember where. And also I am wondering how effective the splinting is likely to be. I was hoping to release this bird and one other. (I have a relatively safe place - a stable with no cats and several chickens.) Thanks for any advice.

 

[JennsPeeps]

Try searching for "spraddle legs". There are a ton of threads on how to alleviate this.

Good luck!!

 

[cjeanean]

All I did was place a piece of shelf liner on the floor of my brooder to give the chick some footing. A lot of the searches that I did suggested using a band-aid on the legs to hold them together, but since the chick was only 2 days old (shipped from the hatchery) I figured its leg muscles would still be pliable enough to correct themselve if given some footing. once I put the shelf liner in the brooder she immediately began walking, although still a little awkward, and within 24 hours you couldn't even tell which chick had been splayed.

 

[frozenchick]

I had a meat chick with splayed legs. As I have over 50, I didn't notice it until the fellow was pretty large. I have used the band-aid method before on incubated chicks. For this big guy, I just used athletic tape and made a splint. Take off a large peice of tape and wrap one end around one leg, pull the legs to the width of normal chicken legs, and wrap the other end of the tape around the other leg and stick it back on to itself. There are lots of diagrams out there. I had to do it for about 2 weeks with my chick. He weighed about 3 pounds at the time. Every couple days I'd put on a new splint, and after the 2 weeks, he's walking just fine.

Good luck! Hope this helps.

 

[LynneP]

Hope this helps, I was given it before I had chicks and though I didn;t need it, I've heard it was a very good guide.

http://www.poultryhelp.com/spraddle.html