[mentalmilly]

Help please  we have hatched a chick that is deformed and needs to be put to sleep unfortunately. He is lively at the moment.   First time l have had to do this but he wont survive in the world of chickens as he is.  Please can anyone tell me how to do this?  Urgent.

[shygirl]

theres been a few recent threads on chick culling, have a look back, only on a month or so ago.

[waddy]

Hi we had to cull one a couple of months ago. It was our first hatch and a bit traumatic but it's legs were deformed and weren't going to come good despite massage and chick physio for a few days. It couldn't get about to eat or drink and trying to get it to take something stressed it further. Some chicks (I have heard of it in ducks and geese) can have splayed legs which can be fixed with a sort of hobble made with elastoplast bringing the legs together but ours had bent legs with a nearly fused joint. It could have been caused by not losing enough weight to create a big enough air sac to develop properly and manoever. It pipped at the wrong end and was stuck. In the end we used an axe (with a lot of overkill to make sure it was very quick and sure) but there are other methods described in the thread below including a link to the thread on leg splinting for splayed legs. I hope it comes right. 



May need to PTS. Kindest way please.

« on: March 24, 2014, 04:14:07 PM »


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[HesterF]

Yep, depends what the problem is. Splayed legs is easily fixed although apparently you shouldn't breed from them (must admit I lose track of which had been splayed and which haven't after I've take their hobbles off). I also had a duckling with a crumpled foot that was fixed relatively easily. But today I had my first non-fixable problem. It was a gosling that I'd really battled to get out (he didn't even pip internally in the egg and I could see him trying to and after a few days when all the others had pipped externally I decided to help). Turned out his leg was completely wrong - hip somehow rotated so his leg was just backwards somehow. I couldn't work out how I could possibly rotate it and even took him to the vet for a second opinion (had been in contact with the vet anyway because I lost one of my adult geese to peritonitis yesterday  ). He agreed that there was nothing to be done - at which point I bottled it and asked him to dispatch - in part at least because I'd taken my four year old daughter with me who was looking forward to holding the little one on the way home again.

If I'd had to dispatch myself, I was going to use a mini version of the broomstick dispatch with a pencil over the back of his neck, right up behind his skull. Probably a bit easier with a gosling than a chick at that size due to the longer neck.

H

[Steph Hen]

Hold and stroke till they are sleeping then clip back of the head with something like a screwdriver handle, then dislocate neck; except I always pull their heads off. I'm not squeemish, would rather head was off than any uncertainty.

I had cream legbars in a recent hatch, so there were several boys to dispatch early on.

[mentalmilly]

Thanks everyone.  It seems there was more wrong with the chick than l first thought, shame but now it has been dealt with. Pellet to the head, instant, after a long cuddle.  Could not face the other options.