Something wrong with my EE's beak :(

[chickintexas]

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of her today since we had company over.

I've got 4 EE's that are a little more than 3 weeks old and one of them has been a real ham since the day she could hippity hop around her brooder. We sort of dubbed her "Sparrow" because of the way she would bounce from one end of the brooder to the other. This afternoon when I checked on all the birds, I noticed that her beak was suddenly not on right. She's got a crossed beak all of a sudden and the only thing I can think of is that she has somehow hurt herself. She doesn't seem to be in pain and her crop was very full as usual this evening at birdy bedtime.

Do you think she hurt herself or could this be a defect that's just now showing itself? If she hurt herself, is there anything that I can do for her to realign her beak?

Thanks.

 

[Kimiko]

Unfortunately, it's probably genetic and it tends to get worse over time. Sometimes you can tip the beak to trim it, but the malalignment never really goes away and it does get worse over time. Feeding in a deep, wide bowl helps, but some get so bad they have to be culled.

 

[BarkerChickens]

Around 3 weeks old is when we noticed one of our Faverolle roos had cross beak. Unfortunately, it got worse over time. Do a search on cross beak and scissor beak (on this site). Somewhere there is a page on how to correct it. We weren't able to do it as our roo had a severe cross beak, but many said it is successful. I wouldn't breed your EE though (if you planned on it anyway) as it is genetic. Good luck!!

There are people who keep their cross beaks, but eating is an issue. We had to cull our roo at 9 weeks old, regardless how hard we tried to cater to his needs. He just couldn't get enough food even with the deep bowl. Some birds have the top beak crossed, so they can scoop food and as long as they have a deep bowl and carrrying humans, they can live a full life. Unfortunately, our roo had a crossed bottom beak and we couldn't continue to see him suffer (and Murphy's law, he had the sweetest personality. We would have loed to have kept him as our Faverolle roo. We only had one other, so we didn't get a choice in the roo we kept).

 

[chickintexas]

My little bird is from Ideal just like most of those others that commented about their cross beak birds.

I guess I'll just keep an eye on her and take care of her beak like the posts suggest. I'm not in it to breed them so I'm not worried about that. If it gets to a point where she starts having real issues with her beak then I'll cull. The kids really enjoy her and that's what really sucks. It's always the good ones, huh?