The subject came up on another thread, but that poor hen has some treatment, healing and recovery ahead and I didn't want to dilute that discussion. I'm volunteering myself to design and/or fabricate prosthetic legs for chickens and I think there is no better community on the internet than this place to get some minds together for that purpose. Unsure if I'm putting this in the right area, smack me with a newspaper and point me to the proper place if so.
Has anyone here used a prosthetic leg on their birds? What worked well? What didn't? I can find a few scattered examples of it being done, some models here and there, some sellers here and there, but what I can't seem to find are any that are backed with discussion and examples of how well they're functioning, especially over time.
Have an example of one you want to share? Input on its design and what you think would be better?
General design advice or considerations? I am not a chicken expert nor a vet. This is way outside of my areas of expertise.
What I do have is a lot of machinery, 3d printers, cnc machines, lathes etc and experience solving a wide variety of problems with them. I'd love to put that to use to give some floofy birbs their mobility back. I had no idea chickens were so resilient to that type of injury!
Anyone who would like to contribute anything at all, I'd love it. Whether its opinions, advice, maybe measurements of some chicken legs and feet with species and weight. (photos with a ruler/tape measure). That'd be valuable to me for a sense of sizing/scale. I've raised quail for a decade but I'm just now starting with chickens. 10 baby floofs so far.
What I'd like to end up with is a general design(s?) that anyone with the right tooling could recreate. I've found people in the 'maker' community to be a very friendly bunch. It'd probably always be fairly easy to find someone that'd make you something for a good cause if there's a design for it already.
Has anyone here used a prosthetic leg on their birds? What worked well? What didn't? I can find a few scattered examples of it being done, some models here and there, some sellers here and there, but what I can't seem to find are any that are backed with discussion and examples of how well they're functioning, especially over time.
Have an example of one you want to share? Input on its design and what you think would be better?
General design advice or considerations? I am not a chicken expert nor a vet. This is way outside of my areas of expertise.
What I do have is a lot of machinery, 3d printers, cnc machines, lathes etc and experience solving a wide variety of problems with them. I'd love to put that to use to give some floofy birbs their mobility back. I had no idea chickens were so resilient to that type of injury!
Anyone who would like to contribute anything at all, I'd love it. Whether its opinions, advice, maybe measurements of some chicken legs and feet with species and weight. (photos with a ruler/tape measure). That'd be valuable to me for a sense of sizing/scale. I've raised quail for a decade but I'm just now starting with chickens. 10 baby floofs so far.
What I'd like to end up with is a general design(s?) that anyone with the right tooling could recreate. I've found people in the 'maker' community to be a very friendly bunch. It'd probably always be fairly easy to find someone that'd make you something for a good cause if there's a design for it already.
