Wry Neck or Deformity While Developing? Lets see if this dose the trick....

[americanchicks]

Hey everyone! Happy Valentines Day!
I been hatching a batch of Red Ranger/Maran Cochin mixes. Going to raise them for meat and see how it goes. I bought the eggs from a 80 year old sweetheart. 9 of the 12 hatched not too bad. Well I had one egg pip on day 19. It was unlike any pip i have seen. Instead of a crack it was a hole with a little blood inside. Day 20 he hatched. He took a long time to zip. After a few hours I noticed him looking up at me. It wasn't until his clutch mates started to hatch that I noticed it wasnt right. This morning everyone has hatched, just one little maran left to go ( I also hatched marans) Now his neck is so far back he cannot walk without falling over. Thinking maybe Wry neck. Or maybe his head was in the wrong position during incubation. That maybe why it was a strange hatch. Either way I made him a neck brace. Figure I would keep it on him for a few days and see if it helps. In case of wry neck Im going to pick up some vitamin E and give him a little drink with a syringe tonight. I will keep you posted on how "Noodleneck" goes. That is his name now.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Either way I made him a neck brace. Figure I would keep it on him for a few days and see if it helps. In case of wry neck Im going to pick up some vitamin E and give him a little drink with a syringe tonight.

Hi there, congrats on your hatch!

Sorry about your little one.

I would ditch that brace as fast as possible and administer a dose of Poultry nutri drench directly to the beak ASAP just below the nostrils, holding the chick in hand with beak facing bend int he forefinger to help direct flow of the drop. They will naturally gobble and swallow when they feel it and this reduces any risk of aspirating it into the lungs.

Since the chick cannot move into or out of the heat, keep it in the incubator while treating. I give a direct dose about every half hour until I see improvement... and have seen rapid recovery.

Please note... I believe Stargazing chicks is caused by thiamine (B1) deficiency...
https://thepoultrysite.com/publications/diseases-of-poultry/216/vitamin-bi-deficiency
There is no in case, according to my experience (several hundred chicks hatched) and that is indeed wry neck and not a deformity.

Dehydration is deadly quick... so depending on how many days old the chick is now, you may need to water regularly and maybe see what @casportpony suggest IF you want or need to tube feed eventually.

 

[Folly's place]

It's likely a vitamin deficiency, or a chick with an exceptionally greater need for one or more of them. She may recover, or not, and should not be included in a breeding group.
Double check the mill dates on your breeder feed, and chick feed, because some vitamins are lost over time in the feed after milling.
If you do a home made diet, or suppliment heavily, review all that, because breeders having deficiencies will have issues with their chicks.
Good luck with her!
Mary

 

[Folly's place]

Another good resource is the Merck Veterinary manual, available online.
Mary

 

[americanchicks]

Update. Well I can safely say food was not the issue at least by my part. I bought the eggs from someone. I got the cone off and started giving vitamin e mixed with water in a syringe 3X a day. Sad to say no improvement and she could not stand up at all. Every time I saw her she was flopped on her back. She stared to seem very lystic so I ended up putting her down. Hate that part but she was suffering. Thanks for all your help.

 

[Fluffyflufffluff]

Hey everyone! Happy Valentines Day!
I been hatching a batch of Red Ranger/Maran Cochin mixes. Going to raise them for meat and see how it goes. I bought the eggs from a 80 year old sweetheart. 9 of the 12 hatched not too bad. Well I had one egg pip on day 19. It was unlike any pip i have seen. Instead of a crack it was a hole with a little blood inside. Day 20 he hatched. He took a long time to zip. After a few hours I noticed him looking up at me. It wasn't until his clutch mates started to hatch that I noticed it wasnt right. This morning everyone has hatched, just one little maran left to go ( I also hatched marans) Now his neck is so far back he cannot walk without falling over. Thinking maybe Wry neck. Or maybe his head was in the wrong position during incubation. That maybe why it was a strange hatch. Either way I made him a neck brace. Figure I would keep it on him for a few days and see if it helps. In case of wry neck Im going to pick up some vitamin E and give him a little drink with a syringe tonight. I will keep you posted on how "Noodleneck" goes. That is his name now.

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Well, It not the most comfortable solution in the world, but I really hope it may help... poor thing, I hope it survives its condition.

 

[Shadrach]

Firstly, I don't think the neck brace is a good idea. The neck needs to be mobile. Forcing it to stay in one position may be a benefit for a strain but for what passes as wry neck I think it's likely to do more harm than good.
Whenever anyone mentions wry neck you'll get told to give 400IU of vitamin E and nutridrench or similar. This seems to be because that is what the Internet references quote.
Attributed causes are generally given as some nutritional deficiency because that is what people believe, but I have yet to read a study the confirms this, particularly when it comes to chicks whose parents are likely to have had the benefits of a balanced commercially produced feed and the correct chick starter or all flock once hatched.
Logic would seem to suggest that if you've hatched a batch of chicks and all bar on or two are healthy and normal then the nutrient components in the egg that the chicks survive on for the first couple of days is correct. This implies that the problem is with the chicks and not the nutrients supplied.
If this chick had been hatched by a hen in fully free range setting, or a feral flock, the mother would have either killed the chick, or abandoned it at the nest site when she left with the healthy chicks.

Where I live (Spain) the reliance on Internet advice from forums such as this doesn't really feature in chicken care, or hasn't until comparatively recently. However, breeders and enthusiasts have been dealing with chicken health problems for centuries and have acquired a considerable amount of knowledge both with broody hatching and human incubation techniques.
It is generally accepted that a broody hen will hatch a greater number of healthy chicks than and man made incubator. Despite the enthusiasm for incubators most leave a lot to be desired and the industry is slowly coming to terms with this. Better incubators or being developed after studies of what is actually involved in hatching healthy chicks.
Healthy chicks currently are guaged simply on whether they are alive and kicking after hatch. There is rather more to it than that.
This study gives an indication of just how complex an ideal incubation and hatch is.
If you are interested in learning then it is worth reading the full article and considering the implications. There are further studies that this article generated on a number of university sites.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-635X2016000600001&script=sci_arttext
If you ask the chicken keepers where I live what causes many of the problems that get lumped under the term wry neck they will tell you it was a disturbed clutch. The article above suggests that the a great many factors are involved in successful hatching of healthy chicks.
This is a young pullet with what would probably get described as wry neck if you were to inquire on many of the chicken forums. No amount of vitamins or diet changes will make this pullet normal. The clutch she hatched from got disturbed and this disturbance is the probable cause of the wry neck. She went on to live a relatively normal life, is a mother to her own chicks and is sitting in the nest box beside me laying an egg as I type this.

This is another hen who developed what would get described as wry neck. No amount of vitamins or diet changes helped her either. I've tried all the recommended treatments over the years.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/nuerological-or-something-else.1318208/
The hen in the BYC link is currently outside free ranging with her most recent batch of chicks.
So, my advice would be, given there is obviously a problem with this chick that is obvious at such a young age, kill the chick and avoid a lot of possible heart ache and work should she survive long enough to be integrated into a flock.

 

[Folly's place]

The one chick that I've had here came from an outside source, not a hatchery, with several other chicks, years ago. Out of dozens of chicks that I had at the time from a hatchery, and raised by a broody, this one had worsening problems and I euthanized her, and because I wondered if she had Marek's disease, had her necropsied.
She had 'granulamatous lesions' in her brain, secondary to vit A deficiency, and would have never recovered. Nobody else had issues, and the likely story was that she needed more than the normal amount of that vitamin, not that the diet was deficient.
Every chick isn't going to live and do well!
Sometimes the fast final solution is best...
Mary

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Update. Well I can safely say food was not the issue at least by my part. I bought the eggs from someone. I got the cone off and started giving vitamin e mixed with water in a syringe 3X a day. Sad to say no improvement and she could not stand up at all. Every time I saw her she was flopped on her back. She stared to seem very lystic so I ended up putting her down. Hate that part but she was suffering. Thanks for all your help.

I don't understand why you didn't try the B vitamins with all the information I gave. You can lead a keeper to information but you can't make them get it.

There could be no improvement without standard nutrient input nor would the chick get any energy... from sitting there starving. Sorry for your experience, I know you didn't cause it and it stinks when these things happen... if you see a stargazer chick again... try the Poultry Nutri Drench... that stuff works wonders sometimes!

It takes courage to put a chick down, even when it's the right thing to do.

 

[Shadrach]

The one chick that I've had here came from an outside source, not a hatchery, with several other chicks, years ago. Out of dozens of chicks that I had at the time from a hatchery, and raised by a broody, this one had worsening problems and I euthanized her, and because I wondered if she had Marek's disease, had her necropsied.
She had 'granulamatous lesions' in her brain, secondary to vit A deficiency, and would have never recovered. Nobody else had issues, and the likely story was that she needed more than the normal amount of that vitamin, not that the diet was deficient.
Every chick isn't going to live and do well!
Sometimes the fast final solution is best...
Mary

None of the chicks I've had here with supposed wry neck were hatchery chicks.
I know it sounds terrible but these days if a mum won't care for them then I won't either. In the long run, by the time you've got them fit, if you get them fit, the mum won't accept them back into the brood and later I'm left with trying to integrate a single chick into an existing tribe that really isn't interested in having them.
What has happened in the past is the single chicks hangs around the outskirts of the tribe and a predator picks it off.