Injured leg

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chickenfan

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Joanna, my lovely two-year-old speckled sussex bantam suddenly has a leg she can't move at all. I've taken her to the BHWT vet and she thinks it may be dislocated or have a small break at the top. She has suggested bringing her back tomorrow for x-ray, which requires a gen anaesthetic. I am worried about this because I know a gen anaesthetic is risky in poultry and also because it sounds unaffordable (hundreds of pounds) if the bone needs pinning, although it will help if it is dislocated. Has anyone had anything like this? Joanna is completely immobile, although she is eating and drinking. She is in a catbox indoors.

Sorry I only post about birds with problems.
 
I am sorry, but I do think you must put the chicken's welfare before your own feelings.

If she has dislocated or broken her leg she must be in agony. I think the vets you use must see you coming. I am sure that if you used our vets they would consider the welfare of the chicken before lining their pocket and would have put her down already. She must be suffering and in distress.

If you keep chicken you must be prepared to cull them yourself in an emergency. I would classify this as an emergency and cannot understand why your vet has not already taken the appropriate action.
 
Hi Sussex, Joanna is bright and cheerful and eating well, and she is gradually improving too. I have had birds far more miserable than this one (eg with impacted crop) which are now fully recovered. I have taken her to the British Hen Welfare Trust vet, not a normal vet.
 
Birds going off their legs can be a neurological problem as well Chickenfan. We had a cockerel went off one leg and we tried physiotherapy, which seemed to be working but then he suddenly lost the use of the other leg and was PTS immediately. This was a Leghorn bantam and I have subsequently heard that this is a breed related issue.
 
I do tend to agree with Sussex on this, at least so far as to say that an X-ray under general anaesthetic, possibly followed by a bone-pinning operation needing longer under anaesthetic and costing hundreds of pounds, might be considered as disproportionate, even unkind, however fond of her you are. I'm glad you say she's cheerful and eating well, and not in obvious pain, because it would seem likely that no break is involved, because if she had broken her leg she wouldn't be acting like that. As with so many chicken problems, possibly the best thing to do if you don't want her PTS at this stage is to keep her quiet and sheltered and just see how she gets on. I agree with Chris about the possibility of neurological damage, and in this case if the symptoms get worse and she gets more off balance, I would definitely have her PTS as there would be no chance of recovery.
You've been having a lot of problems with your chickens lately, Chickenfan, and you look after them with such loving care. We all go through periods like this, I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel soon for you and your birds.
 
Thank you Chris and Marigold. I am not considering the pinning by an Avian Specialist if this is necessary. BHWT vet has suggested wrapping the leg if it is broken or putting it back if it is dislocated. But I'm worried about giving her gas. At the moment she is on a homeopathic remedy for injuries and Metacam. I was very alarmed to see her not get up after being mated by the cockerel so I think an injury is most likely. She has no neurological abnormalities and was vaccinated for Mareks.
 
Forgot to say I have quite a collection of birds now and never post about the problem-free ones. The 3 chicks with such unpromising beginnings seem fine too.
 
I'm glad I took her back to BHWT vet for the x-ray. She does have a broken leg and is now in a support bandage. Broken legs are apparently a common problem in caged birds, so this was fairly routine for her. Unlike other animals with broken bones, birds tend to tolerate pain better, so a break is not as obvious. She's never had a problem with giving a bird gas and she says the bones generally knit together in 2-3 weeks. So Joanna is on Metacam for pain relief, and I am to give her 'physiotherapy' on her one good leg so she doesn't lose muscle tone.
 
Of course Marigold - she won't ever go back with him. Miraculously I have a beautiful little millefleur sablepoot cross chick from Joanna that has just been born this morning. I now have 4 chicks in all from her - all totally gorgeous little things. Two I have already are from the Sablepoot cockerel and one purebred. Interestingly the sablepoot crosses have come out with almost unfeathered legs and have grown twice as fast the other chicks even though the sablepoot is a small bird.

I was restricting her access to the speckled sussex cockerel to a few minutes a day as she is petite for her breed and he is an average size and weight, but this was clearly a dreadful mistake. I've noticed she has laid thinner shells lately, so perhaps she was low on calcium too.

But if anyone else has broken legs or wings, there are other options to culling. I don't know how Joanna will get on, but it seems bird bones heal quickly, the BHWT birds generally get better, and x-raying and bandaging is not prohibitively expensive and improves and speeds recovery.

Homeopathically, I should have given her Aconite as soon as I noticed the injury, then arnica and bone-knit. Confusingly, she walked around fine the day it happened.
 
Not sure what caused the break. I found another bird caught in some black nylon mesh left by someone doing some fencing here. I hadn't seen it. I certainly look anxiously at hens with cockerels now. Joanna is slowly progressing. She is bright and perky in herself and is eating well, but I have to keep her protected in a cat box because of her immobility and ensure she doesn't get bored. She also cuddles up to one of my broody hens for some of the day to be with the flock. She is now putting her broken leg on the ground sometimes. The support bandage didn't last long as she struggled out of it, so perhaps this was a waste of money and more suited to ex bats. If I had left her quiet as Marigold suggested she might have done just as well. Am still puzzled by suggestions to cull if a bird is bright. I wouldn't want to be killed if I had a broken leg, though obviously I'll need to watch her progress very carefully. Would love to hear if anyone else has had anything similar.
 
Well, if you had a broken leg, you wouldn't need a general anaesthetic to get it Xrayed, would you, because you'd have enough sense to stay still on the table. And then you'd be able to co- operate in whatever remedial treatment was necessarily, to get a good result, and not struggle out of your protective bandage or splint. And it wouldn't cost you hundreds of pounds on the NHS, would it?
I'm really glad she's doing OK, but I still feel that, in some cases, not necessarily this one, one has to decide whether it's kindest to put a bird to sleep, as well as keeping vet. expenses in proportion to the likely outcome and the bird's age/life expectancy thereafter. If the bird is bright and not apparently sick or in pain, this is of course a big factor in deciding what to do.
 
Its cost under £50, but I see where you are coming from now, Marigold, and yes, there is a morality issue about spending a lot of money on one's pets when the money could have gone to Nepal or elsewhere.
 
chickenfan said:
Am still puzzled by suggestions to cull if a bird is bright.
Click to expand...
Your chicken has a broken leg! The break will not heal if you cannot keep the support bandage on and are not willing to pay to have the leg pinned.
 
Marigold said:
...If the bird is bright and not apparently sick or in pain, this is of course a big factor in deciding what to do.
Click to expand...

About says it all!
I would pull out all the stops for mine if possible but that's not the only way. When we first got our rescue dog he clocked up £900 in vets fees in 2 months before we insured him ( hasn't had an accident since!)
He was rescued off the vets table as a stray. If we couldn't have afforded the fees it would not have been carless to go the other way. We could then have given a good home to a less unfortunate dog!
 
Not to worry Sussex, she's doing well, and neither pinning or rebandaging were recommended.
 
Joanna is making a good recovery from her broken femur. She is back in lay and is able to walk and put all her weight on the leg that was broken.
 
Just tuned in to this thread for the first time and am glad to hear that all has turned out well. My view Chickenfan (for what its worth) is that what you want to spend on vet fees to look after what is at the end of the day a pet is your business and nobody else's any more than how much you want to spend on your car or a your clothes or whatever else, if you think it is worth it then go for it. I also think that the severity of a broken leg in a chicken has been hugely overplayed, chickens are fast healers, like us their bones naturally look to knit together, if you can keep your bird off its feet and generally immobile there is no reason why a break shouldn't heal,it may not knit perfectly, the bird may limp for the rest of its days but unless you are planning to enter them into some kind of chicken race then I don't honestly see why you would put them down without giving them a good chance to recover, they don't use their bad leg initially because of the swelling and pain, which is natures way of saying don't use your bad leg so I don't think painkillers are necessarily a good thing as it runs the possibility of the bird using the leg more than it ordinarily would. Not sure what people would have said about my treatment of a broken leg in GG a couple of years ago,I didn't go the vet I put her in a pet carrier in the middle of the run with the other chickens for a fortnight before letting her out hoping she would be able to limp about after a rest, luckily she could, she spent the next month sleeping in the nest box as she couldn't perch but eventually she made a far better recovery than I would have imagined, limped a bit when it was cold but was still first to any tasty titbits when she needed to turn on the speed and had no worse a quality of life than any of the others.
 
Great to hear your story Dinosaw! I'm very glad your bird made a good recovery too. I used a similar technique with Joanna, keeping her in a cat box initially, putting her in her favourite spots, keeping her warm. I think you are right about the painkillers and I didn't need to see the vet, but it was useful to know what I was dealing with, and that most birds recover very well from broken legs and wings.
 
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