Sciatic nerve damage?

[ashjohnson]

Hello all! Last June I got 8 chicks...4 Barred Rocks & 4 Easter Eggers. They all started Laying between the end of November & the middle of December. Alice was the last one to lay an egg. All the hens appeared healthy, strong & active. On December 26th, Alice, who had acted fine all morning, went into a nest box to lay her 4th egg ever. She never left the box. I went to check on her & after 2 hours & no egg, I removed her from the nest box to check on her. I placed her on the floor, & she had a very bad limp. But she moved away from me & out into the run, so I decided to just watch her. Went to check on her 10 minutes later to discover that she had laid an egg in the run & was now completely down & being attacked by the other hens. I scooped her up & brought her inside. She was limping badly. I spoke with 2 separate vets that day, a farm vet & my family vet. No one was sure what was happening, but the farm vet said she could do a necropsy if she died. I also spoke to someone whose family has kept chickens for 7 generations & she felt it might be sciatic nerve damage...that perhaps when she went to lay the egg it pressed on the nerve. She managed to lay 2 more eggs over the next 4 days. At which point she stopped trying to walk & stopped laying eggs. We kept her in a pen with food & water & let her rest. Slowly over the course of the winter, she began standing more & more. Towards the end of February, she even started laying eggs again. The problem is, her right leg is still not right. She limps when she walks on it & her foot has no turned in. So when she walks, she steps on the left foot with the turned in right. My sister in law made her some diapers, & we are taking her out each day in the back room to hopefully exercise that leg, but it doesn't seem to be improving. At nite she goes back into her pen. She does faithfully deliver breakfast to us regularly these days! Nice large size eggs too. I have been giving her Rooster Booster & Poultry Drench. Nothing has changed. She has never acted sick at all. She has been perky & alert thru all of it. Onset was sudden when she went to lay an egg. So within 2 hours she went lame. The leg has never been paralyzed. Has anyone ever seen anything like this happen before? My vets are stumped. Everyone is stumped. But with so many people here, maybe someone else will have some insights. Thank you in advance!View attachment 2620043

Did you ever resolve this? I have a chicken right now that is this story nearly to a T. Laid maybe her 4th egg and the next day when I let them out she was on the floor on her hauks unable to walk properly. She also had curled toes and was trying to walk on them. Separated her from the flock and threw the kitchen sink at her. Antibiotics, corid, ivermectin for worms, nothing really seemed to do anything except for colloidal silver helped. She wasn't eating and had diarrhea for a while, but now she is eating again and her poop is normal (never any weird color). Been dosing with rooster booster and lots of nutritional yeast as well as fermented food. She is slowly getting better, but still curled toes and walks over her own feet because the right leg is twisted inward. She's getting stronger everyday and moving around the yard now. But still using her wings to balance.