Okay, one of my 2 week olds from my assorted bantam hatch has developed scissor beak.
Last year I had my first experience with this with 3 little Silkies. I wondered then if it wasn't from something that happened during incubation since one of the chicks came from my birds and the other 2 from eggs I bought. The first 2 I noticed were adopted by a nice lady who came to buy chicks. I didn't notice the last one right away until it seemed very bad. After some research and a couple beak trims that seemed to not do anything very useful I gave up and decided to let nature do it's thing. He seemed healthy otherwise, although socially challenged. By fall it had straightened back up and to this day is almost unnoticeable. So that is the story of my previous experience.
Fast forward to today and my little bearded bantam. I sat down and decided to see what beak trimming would do. That didn't seem to change the way anything aligned and maybe ever so slightly helped with the way the lower beak contacts the top. After a brief nap and waking up with a chick sleeping on me, I decided to further investigate/research the structure of its beak/mouth. The warm sleepy chick was surprisingly cooperative and I quickly noticed 3 tiny bumps along the exposed portion of its upper beak (roof of its mouth). Not being sure if they were normal, I decided to investigate even further (my hubby would call that obsessive picking, but he's not here right now to judge...lol). Anyway, it only took a couple very gentle "picks" to remove 2 splinters (possibly feed???) The third tiny bump does not seem to want to be removed so I put the chick away for now while I think this through a bit. I did notice instant improvement when the 2 splinters were removed. Not fixed, just improved. I got a couple of the other chicks to hold still long enough to verify that they don't have anything similar in their beak. The 2 I did remove appeared to possibly be tiny slivers of seed hull. Now I have no idea if the splinters caused the scissor beak, or the scissor beak just made it easier to get splinters...
Anyone ever find anything like this before? Any thoughts?
Last year I had my first experience with this with 3 little Silkies. I wondered then if it wasn't from something that happened during incubation since one of the chicks came from my birds and the other 2 from eggs I bought. The first 2 I noticed were adopted by a nice lady who came to buy chicks. I didn't notice the last one right away until it seemed very bad. After some research and a couple beak trims that seemed to not do anything very useful I gave up and decided to let nature do it's thing. He seemed healthy otherwise, although socially challenged. By fall it had straightened back up and to this day is almost unnoticeable. So that is the story of my previous experience.
Fast forward to today and my little bearded bantam. I sat down and decided to see what beak trimming would do. That didn't seem to change the way anything aligned and maybe ever so slightly helped with the way the lower beak contacts the top. After a brief nap and waking up with a chick sleeping on me, I decided to further investigate/research the structure of its beak/mouth. The warm sleepy chick was surprisingly cooperative and I quickly noticed 3 tiny bumps along the exposed portion of its upper beak (roof of its mouth). Not being sure if they were normal, I decided to investigate even further (my hubby would call that obsessive picking, but he's not here right now to judge...lol). Anyway, it only took a couple very gentle "picks" to remove 2 splinters (possibly feed???) The third tiny bump does not seem to want to be removed so I put the chick away for now while I think this through a bit. I did notice instant improvement when the 2 splinters were removed. Not fixed, just improved. I got a couple of the other chicks to hold still long enough to verify that they don't have anything similar in their beak. The 2 I did remove appeared to possibly be tiny slivers of seed hull. Now I have no idea if the splinters caused the scissor beak, or the scissor beak just made it easier to get splinters...
Anyone ever find anything like this before? Any thoughts?
