Urgent: Splayed leg in day-old? Advice please!

[TexasTurkeyMama]

Agreed!

Most of my local feed stores do start getting chicks this time of year!

I have gotten a friend and then had the original not make it.

All we can do is try our best!

Buy two friends.

 

[My Pretty Pekins]

Buy two friends.

I would if I lived in the US where feed stores were a thing...
Anyhow, we haven't had any lonely peeps at all yet, s/he is pretty chirpy. So that's good I suppose!

 

[Sierra G]

I did order eggs, which hatched with multiple splays, curled toes, crossed legs, etc, and then I lost several over the first week to slipped tendons. Someone I know in vet school told me that was classic signs of poor nutrition in the parents. My next generation of the survivors bred to my home growns had no defects at all in about 150 chicks. So I tend to think the nutrition of the original parents did play a part.

Poor nutrition is one possibility. Another is that some nutrients behave differently at different temperatures. If your incubator is too cool for too long you can use up all the nutrient before the bird fully develops leading to no hatch. Even if you only have temperature fluctuations for a few days it can still use up enough nutrients to cause problems. When the rolling blackouts were going on in February I had 5 Saddleback goslings in the incubator. They came from a reputable breeder I'd bought from before. Two died when the blackouts were going on, two were fully developed and failed to pip, and the last one pipped, was in the shell three days and then hatched with a splayed right leg and curled toes on the left foot. It took some work to fix the splayed leg and she's still a bit pigeon toed on the left foot, but I don't think there's any reason to believe the problems are genetic. And while I think the problem was related to available nutrients, I don't think the parents' diet was the problem in this case.