"Spazzy" the keet -- what to do?

[farmergal]

I have a six-week-old guinea keet who has a problem that no one (at the feed store, local guinea breeders, etc.) seems to have seen before. At about 10 days old, he started shaking. The shaking kind of impaired his ability to function with the group of 12 keets and chicks he was living with, so I moved him to a separate brooder with a bantam chick as a companion.
Over a month later, he is still in my house with that poor bantam chick. Still shaking. It hasn't really gotten worse or better -- although now he really can't walk, and his legs seem to bend both ways (not a good sign.) For a while (when I had it), he was getting raw goat's milk. I've given him nutri-drench (which is really hard to force down the beak of a guinea keet). He has vitamins and electrolytes in his water, always.
Any suggestions on what to do with Spazzy? At times I've thought maybe it would be less cruel to just put him out of his misery. But the truth is, he really has a will to live... he gobbles down food and water like nobody's business (although he's still on the skinny side, probably because he expends so much energy shaking all the time.)
The only time he doesn't shake is when he's asleep. Any help appreciated!

 

[Akane]

Most likely the leg problems were starting when he started shaking. He was shaking from the effort of keeping himself standing. My hen with a bad leg did that too. Birds will just keep going without any sign of the trouble they are having or pain they are in. I had a quail with broken legs that just kept shuffling around trying to eat and drink right until the day it died. They all do that. You need to try to figure out what the leg problem is so he can walk normally or it really would be kinder to put him down.

 

[farmergal]

Interesting. He didn't seem to have a leg problem until at least a week after he started shaking... At first it was just shaking with no other symptoms whatsoever. (And he would shake even when he was sitting down, not just when trying to stand up.)

Here I was thinking it was some kind of nervous system problem... maybe I was wrong though. So you think I should try and splint the legs?

 

[Lollipop]

Gotta agree with Akane. Of course I cull hard anyway. You don`t want him to breed and pass that along. Cull him......Pop

 

[Akane]

They'll shake even while crouching if trying to stabilize themselves with a bad leg. If you can figure out exactly what is wrong with the leg you can try to fix it but if the problem has slowly been getting worse for 6weeks the outcome isn't promising except for maybe a simple case of splayed leg. My hen that injured her leg ended up with splayed leg from sticking it out sideways and not standing on it. It's taken more than a month but she's back to normal so in the case of injury or acquired splayed legs it's possible. If it's a birth deformity, an injury that healed wrong, or like my quail a broken leg then it's probably not fixable. It just depends what the problem is.

 

[maine chicks]

sad condition-probably best to cull.

 

[meepstress]

I had some guinea keets that did the same shaking thing. I hatched them out myself. Out of a group of 48 eggs, I had 40 hatch and 2 of them ended up shaking. One started shaking after only being 2 days old, and the other started shaking after being 10 days old. I really doubt that it's a leg problem, just by my own observations (I think guineas are adorable as keets so I watched them a lot). I felt bad for my shaking guineas too, but they didnt get better after a few weeks and I needed the brooder pen so we put them out of their misery.

I have been looking online all over the place to see if anyone else had this problem, but this is the only search result that had the same symptoms. It most likely is a nervous system problem, but I'll keep looking. I think it had something to do with hatching. Maybe the egg was shaken up or something and it messed it up? If I find out I'll post it on here.