Silkie chick ate molded chick treat

[Swbertrand1]

Give her the three doses a day, and just watch for the change in her poop from normal to greasy diarrhea. If that happens, then you'll need to stop.

But she should respond to the E before she gets to that point.

I will; we're going into day 8 on this wry neck, and we're seeing some positive signs, but it's really 50/50 right now.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Update 7/1:

Our little girl is still in the woods, but ever so slightly showing some improvement.
She's now on a three-a-day schedule with Prednisone, Vit-E, B-Complex, and Selenium.
She was looking good after the 8AM morning dose, but would slide backwards as the day went on, so much that by 8PM, she really looked almost like she'd had no improvement.

Thus, we modified the dosages to spread them out a little more evenly. Instead of 8AM and 8PM, we're giving her doses every 8 hours (7AM, 3PM, and 11PM). We're not giving her a full Vit-E gelcap at each of those times, but an "eyeballed" 2/3 of a gelcap; Prednisone is given at each time at 1.25mg, and she gets 1/8th of a B-Complex tablet at 7AM and 3PM only. Selenium is given at each dosing too at 25mcg.

It's worth noting that she gets any therapeutic mixed with Yogurt, Starter Feed, and a little Rooster Booster crumbles all mixed into a moist paste that sometimes she'll eat and other times have to be fed to her. The problem: we keep live mealworms close by, so she holds out for those in lieu of eating the mash we create.
Water is given at each dose (2-4ml) and about the same amount every two hours during the day if we don't see her drinking from any water source, so that's most every two hours she gets water hand fed to her. She also naps inside from 12pm to 1pm and 5pm to 6pm each day. Otherwise, she's outside with her sister...

Yesterday was her first day on this modified regimen, and she had a really good day, far better than the 2 or 3 days prior. Her morning stint outside (nearly 5 hours) went pretty well too. Her stools look perfect, she has a healthy appetite, and is the same happy chick we've known since she hatched. HOWEVER, she still just can't hold her head up sometimes and walks backwards for as much as 30 seconds before she just sort of "snaps out of it". Fortunately, that's only about 5% of the time she's awake, but it shows us that she's still in the grip of wry neck. It's very frustrating, but that she holds her head at about the 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock position when it's not hanging tells us she's getting just a little bit better.

Here are some photos of her with her sister yesterday afternoon.


Waiting for me when I got home from an appointment at 1pm:

On the move - not bad form for her considering where she was a week ago:

Posing for the camera; a month ago, any time a phone or camera was pulled out, she would run up to it almost like she wanted her photo taken:

With her sister in the yard near dusk:

And another with her sis:

She can eat, but the little bouts with a hanging head get worse than this.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Update 7/2:

We had another VERY good day with our little wry neck Silkie. As mentioned, she's now on 3-a-day treatments to try to level her intake and smooth the ups and downs as the medication wears off over a 12 hour stretch. It seems to be working better for her on the 8 hour schedule.

She had her best day since this started 11 days ago. She greeted me this morning sitting upright and with her head relatively straight compared to days past. After her 7AM therapeutics, I reunited her with her sister ASAP, and they were together until a 1PM rain shower. Sis got delivered to the coop; our little wry neck patient came indoors to her ICU bed. She didn't take her usual mid-day nap, but instead stayed alert and focused on her surroundings, CLEARLY showing signs of improvement!

Once the rain passed about an hour later, she was back outside with her sister, and her neck improved steadily over the afternoon - she took NO NAPS all day by the way. Since it was relatively cool (read LESS HOTTER than hell!) this day, I think that helped her during her outside time suppressing her general heat fatigue.

We're looking forward to more improvement over the coming days and weeks knowing that there is no guarantee, but she's SO MUCH BETTER that it bring tears to our eyes.

EDIT 7/3 (morning): She did a happy dance flight this morning and didn't crash-land like she did a few days ago! ++++++++++



Here are some photos of her on July 2 (Friday):

She greeted me in the AM with her head up:

Looking for bits around their coop:

She's in the back, but head up!

Of course, we still have some moments like this, but they don't last very long and are not as frequent:

On the move...........

 

[Swbertrand1]

Update 7/6:

(EDIT at bottom of the page from 2 hours after this post)

The last few days have been generally good for the little girl, but we seem to have hit a plateau in her improvement. She can stand, walk, eat, drink, even runs pretty well all while happily spend the entire day in the run with her sis, but there are some concerns:

a) She cannot jump up or down effectively; she needed help to get down from a deck edge that is about 15" up from where she was trying to go yesterday - so much angst and trepidation in her sounds when trying to get down. She just didn't trust jumping. Jumping up is not attempted by her in any circumstance.

b) She cannot roost well if at all. We've tried to put her gently on low roost bars just to see if she could maintain her balance and stay there. After numerous attempts, she was able to stay put only once out of about 8-10 attempts. Usually, she'd roll her head under and start wobbling or try to back off the bar - neither would result in a good outcome if she were on her own...

c) She will not go up the ramp to the coop. We did this as a test alongside the roosting test. Though she still stays indoors at night, she spends most all day outside in a run with just her sister or in other areas of our yard, but it seems that she's only comfortable with level ground. Watching her for hours, she doesn't seem to like ANY elevation change of more than a few inches.

d) She loses her balance periodically, sometimes stumbling, other times just getting her footing in the right place, then moving on, but it's disconcerting to watch.

We're still hopeful for a full recovery, hoping that she isn't going to be bound for life by wry neck.


EDIT: When going outside to check on her and her sis at 11am, she was running around the run in pure happy joy. She was play posturing with her sis and I even watched her walk up on a 4x4 and eventually come down - all positive signs...

 

[Swbertrand1]

Update 7/6:

(EDIT at bottom of the page from 2 hours after this post)

The last few days have been generally good for the little girl, but we seem to have hit a plateau in her improvement. She can stand, walk, eat, drink, even runs pretty well all while happily spend the entire day in the run with her sis, but there are some concerns:

a) She cannot jump up or down effectively; she needed help to get down from a deck edge that is about 15" up from where she was trying to go yesterday - so much angst and trepidation in her sounds when trying to get down. She just didn't trust jumping. Jumping up is not attempted by her in any circumstance.

b) She cannot roost well if at all. We've tried to put her gently on low roost bars just to see if she could maintain her balance and stay there. After numerous attempts, she was able to stay put only once out of about 8-10 attempts. Usually, she'd roll her head under and start wobbling or try to back off the bar - neither would result in a good outcome if she were on her own...

c) She will not go up the ramp to the coop. We did this as a test alongside the roosting test. Though she still stays indoors at night, she spends most all day outside in a run with just her sister or in other areas of our yard, but it seems that she's only comfortable with level ground. Watching her for hours, she doesn't seem to like ANY elevation change of more than a few inches.

d) She loses her balance periodically, sometimes stumbling, other times just getting her footing in the right place, then moving on, but it's disconcerting to watch.

We're still hopeful for a full recovery, hoping that she isn't going to be bound for life by wry neck.


EDIT: When going outside to check on her and her sis at 11am, she was running around the run in pure happy joy. She was play posturing with her sis and I even watched her walk up on a 4x4 and eventually come down - all positive signs...

UPDATE 7/11:

We're still seeing improvement in our little Silkie chick who is now 13 weeks old and came down with Wry Neck on June 22.

a) She still can't jump up or down pretty much at all, but she's trying to overcome that fear. She manages to climb up to the edge of the cat bed and can turn herself around on the edge of the wicker construction, but won't take the 9" jump to the floor below.

b) Based on "a" above, she is now able to roost somewhat, but we don't allow her to go to sleep in a roosting position for obvious reasons.

c) She hasn't been exposed to the coop ramp again since last week, but that will come.

d) She still loses her balance but not as badly. It's almost as if the wry neck causes her to not see in three dimensions (up, down, & DEPTH), but she has no problems seeing food and water - weird. It's almost like she has vertigo when faced with an up or down situation that would require jumping.

EDIT later in the day 7/11: Finally got her to jump down from about 14" to the ground and she did it perfectly the first couple of times, stumbled a few times, then got it a few more times. PROGRESS!!!


On the upside, she's still happy, otherwise healthy, has gained weight steadily through this ordeal, loves to play with her sister (she's now dustbathing again as of this morning), and mingles with the full flock when they all free-range in the early evening.

Sadly, the crash landings are still happening when she tries to do what we call the "happy dance": she runs with wings flapping and tries to jump/skip in the yard, but she usually veers off to the right, going right side first into the soft grass and tumbling over with wings flailing. But, she gets right back up like it was what she meant to do... :-\

She's still readily taking her Vit-E/Selenium (we've moved over to the Durvet paste for goats 3 times per day) mixed with Yogurt, Starter Feed and decreasing amounts of Prednisone. She is also getting her B-complex in liquid form now (1ml 2 times per day).