LIMPING CHICKS & KEETS

I ordered 15 chicks from mypetchicken.com on March 21st they were housed inside then in a small coop with a run presently I hatched my own keets inside and after 2 weeks put them in another building they have separate feeds a few days ago my flower hen chick was limping on one foot then both feet she gingerly walks and then sits quickly I brought her in and housed her in back room she has no other symtoms is alert and great appetite last night we noticed a keet was limping it's one foot seems spastic I put polyvinyl in the water and I did look better this am the chick seems improved after vitamins and quality diet she does walk better after 1/4 aspirin I'm afraid they may have mereks or something that will spread I have 2 week old chicks and ducklings in my spare room and 2 parrots as well so oooh what should I do? Euthanize? Treat with tlc and supplements? I'm puzzled please give me your advise thank you

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by: brad

I'm going to assume you mean Parakeets or Budgerigars?

Limping certainly could be a sign of Mereks, but also of many other things. Short of expensive veterinary testing, I highly encourage isolation & TLC. Let this play out, so you have a better idea of what's going on.

As I'm sure you've read, Mereks has some very specific symptoms. I wouldn't worry too much because if it's on your place...it's there. How it, or other disease - IF ANY- got there, isn't going to be helpful.

Very important that you try to discover what is going on by supporting these 2 chicks and see how they progress. Doing that will give you a much more educated perspective to make your future decisions.

Hopefully this is just an odd coincidence. I've raised chicken chicks and Budgies, too. The most common cause of lameness in Budgies was when a cage ran out of calcium supplement and I didn't catch it in time. Budgie chicks would hatch with soft bones, causing spraddled legs. Sometimes just one leg was affected, sometimes both.

Hoping both of these recover quickly and it's nothing contagious. Wish we could be more helpful, but without seeing the birds, and even then, it can be very difficult to diagnose, as you have discovered.

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