chicken birth anomalies, part 2: an underdeveloped leg

despite having a really great hatching experience for our first batch of chicks, there were still some anomalies in our new population of chicks. of course we’ve had some chicks who took longer to hatch then others, or some chicks that appear to be smaller (a little more runty) than the others, but this is to be expected. no chick is the same, of course!

beyond these “average uniquenesses” among our chicks, three particular anomalies stand out from this experience:

1. a chick born with part of her yolk sac unabsorbed
2. a chick born with an underdeveloped leg
3. a chick that actually needed help hatching

i want to describe these three different anomalies and how we’ve dealt with them/plan to deal with them. this post focuses on the second…

anomaly #2

when this chick was hatching  i didn’t notice anything different about it. it wasn’t until a day or two later, when the chicks stopped sleeping all the time and started moving around a lot more, that i realized that he didn’t move about like the others. he never used both legs and when he stood up, he usually fell/flopped over in order to move from place to place. i picked him up and realized that his right leg didn’t fully bend. although it looked like a normally developed leg, it seemed like he had something wrong with his bone that kept him from extending his leg past halfway. he could pull it all the way up under his body, but he could’t stretch it out fully.

after i realized that he needed some extra help, i went a little overboard and even designed a metal wire leg for him so that he could learn to walk… but i never used it. jason, rightfully so, convinced me that in the beginning of this life he needed to learn to cope with his disability if he was going to make it at all.

so we watched and waited. i picked him up every chance i got and made him drink water and tried to get him to eat. usually he would protest and not eat anything, but every now and again he would peck at the chick food. this concerned me until days later (he was still doing fine even though he was clumsy and rested a lot) i saw him stand up on one leg and hop/fall over to the food tray and prop himself up with a wing to eat! he’d figured it out after all!

i knew that if he could figure out how to eat, he could certainly figured out how to drink! he was tough, after all.

the video below shows him moving around his house… usually he hugs the wall and moves clockwise (with his bad leg side sticking out). although he moves this way most commonly, he still isn’t scared to move though the middle of the brooder for any reason.

he’s gotten better and better at hopping, and even though he is smaller than all the others (he gorges himself less and has to use more energy getting around), he seems very smart! he usually waits to eat until most of the the other chicks are resting so he has time and space to get what he needs. and… no other chicks are picking on him, even though his foot sticks out sideways. sometimes others will peck at it to see what it is, but never more than once or twice.

one thing that has changed since the first week-and-a-half: his leg no longer beds at all, even towards his body. the bones seems fused in one position… who really knows what happened?!

i’m really hoping he’s a rooster, so that i can have a one-legged rooster friend that rides around on my shoulder! i’ve even started writing a children’s book and he is one of the main characters’ sidekicks and best friends.

.:.