Severed leg

[Peregrine]

Our chick is doing fine!

She's standing on one leg like a flamingo, and even hops around fairly well. I think she'll be able to get around just fine, although I probably won't let her out of the coop to free range with the others. As long as we can keep the wound clean and it heals up properly, I think she'll live to a ripe old age.

It's probably too late to save the chick that you had, but if it happens again or to anyone else, now you have some hope that you can save it.

 

[hinkjc]

I had an araucana hen snap a leg. We have no idea how it happened. Just saw one day that she was hopping on one leg and using her wings to move. While she lasted a couple days like that, it was horrible watching her in pain and struggling to get out of the way of the other birds and to get to the food/water. We decided it was best to put her down. I think it's an individual decision and really dependent on how bad the injury is. My girl's was pretty severe upon inspection and would have required an amputation, which we do not do here. I am a firm believer of keeping/raising strong birds, regardless of incident.

 

[HHandbasket]

It's not just about surviving the injury. The poor animal's quality of life is going to be horrendous and miserable. Might be fine now 'standing on one leg' as a chick, but that "chick" is going to someday weigh 4 or 5 pounds & that little stick leg ain't gonna hold it up anymore. It won't be able to get to its food source or water source--you will have to bring it to the chicken. That's so awesome that you will be available to that chicken 24 hours a day to feed it, water it, and clean its hiney because it won't be able to do ANYTHING for itself once it becomes normal size and weight & can no longer get up on that one leg.

 

[Peregrine]

I'm happy to report that our one-legged chicken is doing fine!

She is now almost a year old and is laying eggs. She gets around just fine hopping on one leg, although she does spend much of her time resting in the grass (I would too!) and does not wander around as far from the coop as our other free-range chickens. The only problem she's having is that our up-in-coming, hormone-crazed, "teenage" rooster has singled her out as the easiest to mate with, so some of her feathers are broken on her back, but other than that, she seems fine. If our older rooster is around, she'll even hop over to him to avoid the younger one.

My daughter baby's her and loves that she can actually pick her up--all of our other hens just run away. As long as she keeps giving us eggs, we'll keep her around!