Sprained/strained ankle?

[hokankai]

We went away on vacation for 4 days this last week. When I got home I noticed one of my mille fleur d'uccle pullets had a pretty good limp. She's still limping, and I'm wondering if there's anything I can do for her. She's been healthy otherwise, and is very agile. I'm assuming she tried to fly around her enclosure (which she's done before) landed in a bad spot and ended up hurting her ankle. She lays down a lot, prefers not to put weight on her foot, but is ok putting weight on her knee. I looked her over for wounds, breaks, mites, etc but couldn't find anything besides a stiff toe...but I can't tell if that's because it's swollen or whether that's just her foot feathers causing that. I can't get a good look at her ankle because of her feathered feet.

Anything I can do to help this along? Does she need to be caged until she heals? She's getting around well enough to eat and drink so that's not a problem.

 

[kidcody]

I would put her in a small cage to limit her movement and see if complete rest helps for a few days. Make sure she has a litter mate with her to keep the stress level down. Hopefully will rest for a couple of days well get her useing her leg again.

 

[hokankai]

So I looked at her today and it doesn't even look like her foot works

. Anybody know of any tests I can do to check it there's nerve damage or not? Is there anything else I can do besides confine her? How long would it take for her to show improvement? Right now she just hops around, lays down, and drags her foot. She bends her knee but from her ankle down it's limp. I don't know if it's just really sprained or if it's something worse. I palpated her entire leg and she didn't cry out like she was in pain, although I'm not sure if that works with chickens as well as it works with dogs/cats.

I have no idea how this would have happened