A chick with Curled Toes

Wifey discovered that another of our chicks has a health issue.  After a few days of having her, she's developed an issue where her toes are curled up in a ball.

After doing a bit of research, it seems to indicate a deficiency in Vitamin B (aka Riboflavin) and is called "curly toe paralysis."  According to poultrydvm.com, "Curly toe paralysis occurs in chicks fed outdated or improperly stored starter feed, or who are bred from parents with a riboflavin-deficient diet."  After checking our feed, it's still in date (and will be for a while).  I don't know how it was stored prior to our buying it, but the rest of the chicks seem fine and we've never had issues previously with other chicks.  We're thinking that it's the last issue: parents with a B-deficient diet.

So we need to try to find something with a Vitamin B supplemented food?  Or vitamins?

Another recommendation to help correct the issue is to provide a splint or walking boot to the chick to help splay out the toes correctly.

Let's pause the post for a moment to let that sink in.









Recommendation: Make a walking boot for your days-old baby chick whose foot is 1/2" long from front to back.

What.     The.      Heck.

After we got done the first of many bouts of shaking our heads at the absurdity of that statement, Wifey did it.  Wifey with her continually amazing sense of ingenuity made one out of two pieces of medical tape.

Below you can see the chick realizing this is really going to cramp her style at the clubs.