Rooster struggling to walk 🐔

[BigBlueHen53]

 

[corviidae]

Oh, shoot. Sorry. I didn’t get a notification that this had a response. Sorry about that.

His cage let him stand freely but it restricted walking. It’s now since become his sleeping cage and we let him have a small fenced area in our yard.

We wormed him with Albendazole with a higher dose a week and a half ago and we’ve been injecting him 0.2 ml vitamin B complex (intramuscular). We increased it from 0.1 ml. We’re seeing improvement and we’ve been having him exercise and carry him around for a while each day to make him use his legs. He’s hobbling and still rests often, but he’s independently walking himself to shade when he needs to and he’s starting to walk around himself without our help. Still just as peppy, no leg swelling or redness, and his toes are no longer paralyzed. No other chickens are displaying symptoms of what he’s got going on.

We’ve started giving him fermented scratch and he’s been on a little mix of all flock crumbles and duck pellets because we’re weeding out layer feed that got mixed in with the crumbles. He also gets ground hibiscus for an extra vitamin boost.

 

[corviidae]

..suppose it's time to update everyone. he's still alive and doing ... relatively well?

he's made a significant improvement but is paraplegic. he's walking around our property bit by bit daily and socializing with some of the other ladies, and we've done enough PT that he can get to food and water on his own. we're just watching him for any drops in quality of life. the vet said he looks great in spite of his illness. he gets carried around all the time while we do chores and he still dirt bathes and does quite a few of his normal activities, but we do have to help clean up the back of his legs sometimes because he'll decide poop is a great thing to sit in. it doesn't look pretty, but he's happy right now. we also make sure he's free range so he has access to forage and can get better exercise.

he's 6 pounds and almost a year old now. blood test results returned today, and we have confirmed a Mareks-positive flock. euthanasia would be pointless by now as our whole flock have been housed together for months, but we haven't lost any chickens. we're just going to lock down more on biosecurity and keep on the PT. any advice for biosecurity is welcome (we're going to get town-only clothes separate and bleach our boots/ keep them outside and we won't be wearing any of our chicken wear to tractor supply and will be cleaning up whenever we get back from places like that).

thank you everyone for your help

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Thank you for the update.
It's good to see he's still around and moving just a little.
I'm sorry to hear about the Marek's diagnosis. Quite a few people have Marek's in their flock and they just try to do the best they can in managing symptoms, giving extra care as needed, etc. - just like you are doing now.

 

[corviidae]

Thank you for the update.
It's good to see he's still around and moving just a little.
I'm sorry to hear about the Marek's diagnosis. Quite a few people have Marek's in their flock and they just try to do the best they can in managing symptoms, giving extra care as needed, etc. - just like you are doing now.

We’ve been doing more range of motion therapy for him and it’s helping him loosen up some more since he curls his feet so much and uses his tiptoes when he walks. The vet doesn’t think he’s in any pain, but it’s mainly to prevent early arthritis best we can. It seems to help…I put him down earlier so he could be with the girls and he chased one of them at the same speed she could run! First time I’d seen him do that since he lost feeling in his legs.

I didn’t know it was so common until we got our diagnosis for him and that people do have mareks positive flocks. Having poultry always has new learning experiences.

Thank you for your response

 

[corviidae]

i sadly want to inform everybody that we’ve lost our boy. not to his disease, but a predator. we aren’t really sure what happened, but we’re guessing by the feathers and no body to be found that it was a coyote.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

i sadly want to inform everybody that we’ve lost our boy. not to his disease, but a predator. we aren’t really sure what happened, but we’re guessing by the feathers and no body to be found that it was a coyote.

Oh no!
I'm so sorry to hear this.
I agree, it does sound like Coyote.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

That's too bad. Thanks for the update.

ETA He was a handsome boy. I'm also sorry about the Mareks.