Wry Neck brought on by injury need help ASAP

[WyoChickenMamma]

I have a six week old naked neck pullet. Today when I was giving them some grapes she grabbed one form my hand, turned around to run off with it, tripped over the feeder and smacked her neck on the bricks I have that elevate the water. She kind of stumbled and shook her head a bit, ran off and ate the grape. I didn't really think much of it other than I bet she saw stars. About 3 hours later I was showing them to some of our friends and we noticed that she was sitting in the corner by herself with her head bent down between her legs. When I picked her up she kind of trembled, almost like a seizure. Her beak bent so far back it was curled up into a circle. I set her down, she straightened her neck, walked over and ate and drank like everything was fine. Not more than 15 minutes, she was back bent over and trembling again. At this point two EE chicks began to peck at her and I removed her from the brooder.

She is currently in a box in my bathroom. I tried to get her to drink some water with some avia charge and tried to get her to eat some scrambled egg. What else if anything can I do for her? I can see some bruising on the back side of the her neck where she banged into the brick. I have found a ton of stuff on wry neck due to lack of vitamins. Will giving her Poly vi sol help with the injury? I really don't want to put her down if I can save her.

 

[oliv]

hey
hopefully someone with more experiance with wry neck will answer but untill then i can come at this from the perspective of somone who deals with injury in an assortment of birds.
first up dont think about euthanasia yet, in the same way animals have the right to die without fear and pain they also have the right to fight for a while first.
Her fall could have resulted in a concussion or spinal shock that could very well clear up in a few days, keep her warm, confine movement in a dark box and offer small amounts of fav feed every few hours, if possible and as usual a vet visit is always recomended they have a product called cortizone or cortizole that is particulary good at redussing swelling in the central nervous system if administered in the first 24 hours,
birds can recover from surprising amounts of trauma but give her a chance, in a few of days if there has been no improvement euthanasia is still an option. if the injury is particulary severe chances are she will die in her sleep..
i could think of worse ways to go.
best of luck.
olive.

 

[WyoChickenMamma]

Thank you Olive for the encouraging words. She is about the same. I am doing all that you said beside the vet visit. She seems to not have as much of the seizing now as she did last night. We are giving her a chance to fight, although I have to admit that watching her last night, all I wanted to do was to end her suffering. My husband was the one that encouraged me to let her have a few days to show us any kind of improvement. She is the sweetest little gal, and I love love love my naked necks.

 

[oliv]

Watching things you care about suffer can be hard..In the twenty years i have been working with wildlife rescue i have seen both absolutely terrible and absolutely amazing things, things that should live, die and injuries that should kill, heal without a trace, crazy stuff and a lot of the time there is no logic in it, like i said before in your naked necks case i expect one of two things to happen, she will either fit out or recover completely within a couple of weeks, for both of your sakes i hope it is the later, anything to do with nerves can take a few weeks tho, but there should be improvement much sooner than that...
how is she going..?
also as an aside cause i have to tell someone.. one of my rescue eggs hatched today.. i am now the foster mother of a small black and yellow duckling with five more on the way

 

[WyoChickenMamma]

She is about the same. The strange thing is that when she starts to seize, I can put my hand under her neck and gently lift her head, it stops the seizing. She is starting to be able to walk a bit, continues to eat and drink a bit. She still goes for dried meal worms like crazy. She spends about 2 hours a day snuggling on my lap in a towel sleeping. She continues to have good solid droppings. I have not counted, but if I had to guess, I bet she tucks her head between her legs or twists her head down around her neck and back up and then seizes at least 3-4 times an hour if not more. If she is startled at all it makes her seize.

As of now our plan is to give her a few more days to see if she shows improvement. The bruise on her neck is lessening. My biggest concern is that she will not be able to join the rest of the flock. As much as I would love to have a house chicken, it is not realistic and what kind of life is it for her to seize several times an hour?

And your rescue ducks...that is awesome!!!! Do you have any pics?

 

[WyoChickenMamma]

We ended up putting little Nala down today. It was sad, but she was seizing several times an hour and it never seemed to get any better. She was only eating when I hand fed her and was losing weight. I love my little Naked Necks and it was sad to have to do it, but we think it was the best option.

 

[oliv]

you are the one who knows best, if you saw no improvement and it was hurting her then you did the right thing, in my opinion it was probably a spinal chord injury be it a pinch between verterbrae or swelling of the chord, it probably would have gone away in time but there are never any guarantees with anything spinal and it could have taken weeks. You did the best you could, gave her a chance and im sure when she died it was very quick.. thats all you can ask for really..

i have six out of seven day old ducklings, very cute.. i will post pics