Baby Quail Injuries!!! HELP

[aurora_bahuki]

Well, my second time around.  My older quails had lots of eggs and the first three hatched yesterday!  YAY!  But there's a problem, the youngest one, who hatched last night, is having two problems.

First, when he tries to walk, his feet/legs spread out to the sides so he can't walk very well at all.  Is this straddle leg?

Second, his right eye is closed and he doesn't seem like he can open it... is there anything I can do for him?

Thanks!

[komori35]

yep, sounds like spraddle leg to me.  i heard there's a special sort of way you can splint the legs to fix it.  you might try looking up old posts, even though the forum just got revised a couple months ago.  as for the eye, is there residue around it or is it just not opening?  if there's junk around the eye and eyelids , that may be the problem.  to remedy that, you should take a tissue soaked in warm water and gently dab away the residue...if it's just not opening, you could try that anyway, it might help.

congratulations on hatching eggs from your quail!

-komori

[Fivehollers]

Make sure you have the baby birds on something they can get a grip on, I use the rubber shelf liner from wal-mart the kind that you can almost see through, keeps stuff from slipping, gives their little feet a good grip and makes their legs stronger, look at the ratio of body to leg, its a wonder they can stand at all. As far at the eye...well in the past and I am going to be very unpopular for this statement, but, the reason we raise birds is to have healthy stock for next years breeding and to eat so if I get a baby that is less than perfect (okay don't think of Wilbur) I thump them. Anyway, if the eye clears up and the legs get better then great but most of the time the bird will die anyway and its "buddies" will kill the weak ones.

Lori

[klsquail]

For chickens a 3/4" Band-aid works great on straddle leg-don't know how it would work on quail though you have to use a really small Band-aid.  For chicks they cut the Band-aid in half the long ways use the pad to space the legs and fold the sticky end around the chick's legs.  After a bout week the Band-aid falls off.

[Raven]

I know this has been an older post but just in case others see it I would like to post this reply. Four days ago when my chick hatched I noticed the same problem. I paniced a little :P Anyway, I got some large drawer liner, the type with the large rubber bubbles. I put that in the box yesterday and this chick has great posture now. I think the larger bubbles helped a lot more. Hope this helps someone out there with the same problem

[lhamid]

I had 1 quail chick with really bad spraddle (could not stand at all) and one with curled toes. For spraddle, I used yarn to tie his legs together (they are so tiny that even half a bandaid was too big). For curled toes, I took a tiny piece of plastic coated wire (like a bread tie) and bent into a 'V'. I then straighten the toes and taped the wire in place with paper first aid tape. (You can remove it after it gets all caked with quail poo by soaking in warm water.)  In 2 days the toes were perfect. I left the yarn on the spraddle chick for a week. Now you can't even tell which birds had the problems. I think the toes get bent in the egg - I have hatched chicks from eggs from all these birds but have had no more cases of spraddle, one with curled toes.

[squirrelhunter]

If you look under the "teens and kids" post in the general forum, theres a lady in there who has a daughter who is an expert on fixing straddle leg, or by the sounds of her posts she is.