Wobbly legged young chicken...sick? injured?

[theburtschickens]

Our youngest chicken, a rhode island red about 4 months old probably, just started acting really strange after we got back home from the weekend. Our roomates didn't notice anything strange or any incidents.

She's acting like she has a hurt leg or has just lost her balance. Can barely stand and walk. I don't see any signs of physical abuse, no blood, no areas of swelling or pus or anything, but she is the smallest of 10 chickens so it's possible she got pecked on. I isolated her in our smaller coop with some shade, food and water...anything else I should be doing? Prophylactic medicine?

Thanks so much...

theburtschickens

 

[bigchickenman]

I had a RIR of mine that done the same thing and I put her in a rabbit pen and after about two weeks she was doing much better.Now she is back out with my other girls and doing just fine.I really hopes she gets better for you.

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

I've just been through something similar with a 3 month old silkie. Initially, she had diarrhea and we treated the whole grow-out pen with sulmet. There were only 2 that had it. Then both of them grew weak in their legs...the white pullet was the worst and we had to bring her in. The black pullet got better over a few days and was able to stay with the others.

The white pullet took about 10 days to be able to stand and take steps. We stopped sulmet after 5 days, gave her polyvisol baby vitamin drops (1/2 dropper) daily and just "tincture of time".

She began walking around yesterday and will go back out with her mates in a couple of days.

We believe it was probably botulism. I did a Google search for poultry botulism and there are, of course, many opinions. One source mentioned giving some Epsom salts in their water to induce diarrhea. This is supposed to help them pass the toxins quicker. We didn't do this as I believe that diarrhea can be fatal to poultry. This pullet didn't eat or drink much for a couple of days, but then started back with a vengence. We gave her as much yogurt as she wanted. She even couldn't keep herself upright and we found her on her back a LOT. I finally made a sling out of some lightweight cloth...cut small holes for her legs and attached it to each side of the box she is in. It helped keep her upright and able to eat. We would put her in it for several hours, then take her out for a while.

Good luck to you...keep us posted.

 

[theburtschickens]

Unfortunately we had to put our Lil' Red to sleep this morning. She just kept getting worse and worse. :'(

I went to our co op and bought some of that Sulmet, and tried to encourage and even force her to drink towards the end. I kept her inside last night in a box with hay, and tried to help her take a drink every couple of hours. This morning she couldn't hold her head up at all, could barely open her eyes, and I couldn't even force her to take a drink. I couldn't stand to see her like that anymore.

I'm worried, from other posts I've read, that it could have been Marek's, because the symptoms sound exactly like that of Marek's, the chickens not being able to stand, lying on side, ...if so, it's highly contagious and I'm worried some of my other chickens could have been exposed. I know that virus is more dangerous to younger chickens, and she was my youngest (actually probably more like 2 months old than 4 like I said earlier), but I'm still worried.

Thanks for all your help.
a very sad theburtschickens

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

So sorry....