Wry neck or Genetics

[jojackc]

So I have four females to one male. One of my females was born with what I thought was wry neck. She has never been stunted by the fact that she has it and has been a happy bird. I tried adding in polyvis into their water when she was 3 weeks old but always figured I was too late to help. Now I had my first and second successful hatch. After my first batch was about two weeks old I started to notice one of the chicks necks to start to bend like my females. Now it is 3 weeks old and it is very apparent that it has the same neck. So here is the rub. I started putting polyvis into their water from day one just to avoid this issue. I wonder now is my female just genetically flawed? Should I cull her to prevent this from happening again? I am not sure that the baby hatched was her's its just my guess. What would you do?

 

[Binki]

I have no experience with wry neck so I could be wrong but I am under the impression wry neck is a symptom of a deficiency?

If so, maybe it's the feed the parents of the egg are on that's passing the deficiency to the egg?

Or could very well be genetic, not sure either way but I *think* wry necks usually die if not treated? So perhaps this is something else (which could also be genetic, lol).

Also it's not *too* uncommon so perhaps a coincidence?

 

[Isaac 0]

Yep.Studies show that wry neck will pass on to off spring due to the lack of Vitamin E and Selenium.It will probably keep passing on.

 

[Binki]

Aw, is there some way to cure adult wry neck? Can you supplement them until it goes away?

 

[Isaac 0]

Aw, is there some way to cure adult wry neck? Can you supplement them until it goes away?

If Given Vitamin E and selenium and put in a stress free environment it might go away.It will be very hard to cure a adult quail with wry neck but it does depends on how long it had it.Sadly i don't know the dosage for quails probably because i never go on this part of BYC.

EDIT-If there are vitamin supplements for quail that might work.

 

[lomine]

I had one chick in my last batch that was born with a very crooked neck. It was so bad the head faced backward. This chick was destined for the dinner plate so I wasn't worried about long-term viability/quality of life. But I decided I might as well try to help it out just so it would have an easier time eating. (My plan was to cull it if it looked like it was struggling too much, no sense it letting it suffer.) I read up on wry neck and sources of vit E. I decided to try chopped up boiled egg since I had a surplus of quail eggs. All the chicks loved them so they ended up getting a lot of eggs and I got really good at peeling quail eggs.

Little Quasimodo had no problem pushing the others out of the way to eat. She improved a lot but even when matured her neck still had a bend.

This was my first chick with a neck problem out of the 50+ I've hatched since starting quail last year (I know that is not a lot compared to many others). My breeders don't have any neck issues. This may have been a deficiency issue or it may have been caused by the way the chick was in the egg. This chick had a very hard time getting out of the egg and could not zip. I did end up helping it out of the egg. Even if my plan wasn't to butcher from the start I would never have kept her as a breeder because of the egg issue and the neck problem. I wouldn't want to risk it.

 

[jojackc]

Sounds like I should cull the momma bird. I will wait to see if I have a replacement female from my six that hatched last Saturday. My first three that hatched seem to be all males. How hard is it to get the current cubby to accept a new female?

 

[lomine]

Culling is completely up to you. You could try another hatch and see what you get.

I would introduce at least two. It's hard to introduce single birds. I house mine next to each other (separated by hardware cloth) for a couple weeks. Then remove the separation and toss in a bunch of mealworms. Never had any issues with this method.

 

[Binki]

Culling is completely up to you. You could try another hatch and see what you get.

I would introduce at least two. It's hard to introduce single birds. I house mine next to each other (separated by hardware cloth) for a couple weeks. Then remove the separation and toss in a bunch of mealworms. Never had any issues with this method.

Maybe you could keep her for a group of hens for just eating eggs?

I agree with the partition method, it still has some risks though less than most introduction ways, it could go real bad real fast (or even take a day or two to get ferocious) when they are introduced, so plenty of places to hide/break lines of sight and monitoring them for a time for signs of bullying

 

[lomine]

Maybe you could keep her for a group of hens for just eating eggs?

I agree with the partition method, it still has some risks though less than most introduction ways, it could go real bad real fast (or even take a day or two to get ferocious) when they are introduced, so plenty of places to hide/break lines of sight and monitoring them for a time for signs of bullying

Very good points. Enough space and places to 'get away' are very important in any housing set-up but more so when adding birds. I could add double the number of birds I have now to my coop/run and still be within the recommended minimums. Also, 2/3rds of the run is covered/filled with cut pine branches. The only open area is where the food and water are so I can fill them more easily. I'm sure these are contributing factors to how easily I've been able to integrate new birds. Introducing outside of breeding season also helps.