Hi all, just registered, first time posting, on the 29th of November I hatched two new ducklings, other than one (now named Snowflake) having slightly splayed legs all had seemed fine, for about the first week they were fed a crumb / mashed boiled egg mixture and Snowflake gradually made a recovery on the leg front and was walking around just fine.
After the first week we switched them over to just crumb, for the remainder of this week everything seemed fine. At the beginning of week 3 there was a noticeable, although not considerable, size difference between Snowflake (smaller) and Snowball (larger), it was the Tuesday / Wednesday of that week that I noticed Snowflake was limping a bit, at first we thought it was sprain it had probably acquired when we last let them swim so left it for a few days. By Friday it had gotten considerably worse, Snowflake was now holding it very oddly and was barely willing to put any pressure on it.
Since this is my first time raising ducklings it wasn't until a couple of days later that I learned it could've been a niacin deficiency (the ducklings are currently being kept inside in a run due to it being Winter where I am), so I've now tried supplementing their normal food with chia seeds (which I checked the nurtritional information of and are very high in niacin), since I started that it's been a few days and I've seen very little, if any, improvement and I'm really worried we could lose this duckling. Here's a short video of the two of them running around in their run (apologies for the mess, I've cleaned it out since), I'm hoping somebody here could give me some insight as to what to do.
Thanks,
- Q
After the first week we switched them over to just crumb, for the remainder of this week everything seemed fine. At the beginning of week 3 there was a noticeable, although not considerable, size difference between Snowflake (smaller) and Snowball (larger), it was the Tuesday / Wednesday of that week that I noticed Snowflake was limping a bit, at first we thought it was sprain it had probably acquired when we last let them swim so left it for a few days. By Friday it had gotten considerably worse, Snowflake was now holding it very oddly and was barely willing to put any pressure on it.
Since this is my first time raising ducklings it wasn't until a couple of days later that I learned it could've been a niacin deficiency (the ducklings are currently being kept inside in a run due to it being Winter where I am), so I've now tried supplementing their normal food with chia seeds (which I checked the nurtritional information of and are very high in niacin), since I started that it's been a few days and I've seen very little, if any, improvement and I'm really worried we could lose this duckling. Here's a short video of the two of them running around in their run (apologies for the mess, I've cleaned it out since), I'm hoping somebody here could give me some insight as to what to do.
Thanks,
- Q