[Womble]

Hi folks,

This one's got me really puzzled. One of our runners seems to have lost the use of both legs. She has no obvious injury, but just doesn't seem to have the strength to get up. She'll try to flap upright with her wings, but can't sustain it, and is soon lying down again.

I can't see anything obvioulsy wrong with her, and all the other dcuks are fine. This is day three, and she's not getting any better.

Any ideas?

[Sylvia]

Could be Mareks disease   Ask your vet. This is caused by a virus and may go through your flock.

[Laurasfarm]

Are there any other signs of ill health, is she underweight? can she still swim?

[Womble]

 
Hi All,
 
A quack update:  Dcuk is still off her feet, but I think a little bit better, walking intermittently now, rather than pushing herself along on her belly.  Her legs aren't paralysed as such, so I'm not sure about Mareks (please advise, any of you who have had this - for example, could this be early stages I'm seeing?), it just seems that she lacks strength.
 
So, still puzzled as to how this could have come on so suddenly, and watching the situation with caution......

[jaykay]

I wasn't sure, so I've just googled it and according to the Merck Vet Manual only chickens, quail and turkeys get Mareks. Certainly I've had it in chickens and my ducks have stayed fine.

That said, I don't have any ideas what's happened to your duck. Perhaps it is that she's exhausted. So why? Is she very thin/light? Has she been wormed lately. Have the drakes been hassling her?

[ppd]

We have had the same problem with a few of our ducks too. We thought worming could be the answer and wormed with no results. We also took the drakes out as they were hard on the ducks and again no better. They have lost weight and their feathers look nibbled, so could it be lice? We have checked them, but hard to find in the down. Our next step is to get some form of delouser, but seems hard to find the info online. I would be very interested if anyone out there has an answer
Have kept ducks in the past and never come across this before

[jaykay]

Everything I can find about ducks being "off their legs" says it's worms.

Here is a typical reply:

Youmust worm ducks. A bad worm burden can knock them off their legs and they are far more inclined to have problems than chickens.
I do mine with flubenvet- same dose as chickens and if i suspect bad infestation repeat process after a weeks break. had some geese here briefly that were utterly infested and the 2 part process totally sorted them out -the improvement was staggering

[ppd]

In our case probably not worms, as we found the same info as you jatkay and wormed, with flubenvet, then again after said time and still no difference! Wary about over worming for all animals as very aware of parasites of any kind becoming immune to the drugs!
Find that finding out problems with ducks online, compared to chickens is sooooooo much harder

[Womble]

 
Thanks All,
 
Duck came very close to being the subject of an autopsy on Sunday, but I thought she was looking just a little bit better, so I left her to see what would happen.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, she's now running around quite happily with all the others, and I still have no idea what the cause was!
 
I don't think it's worms (if it was, why would she have recovered, although I'm going to worm them all again this week just to be sure), and it wasn't sexual exhaustion either  . Not sure I'll ever have an answer to this - let's hope none of the rest of them come down with it, whatever it was!!

[northfifeduckling]

did she lay in that tinme (you could only tell if you had her isolated, of course  )? Maybe she was egg bound? One of mine was under the weather and very weak recently, I felt it was too much male attention was probaly the cause as her head was almost bold....
 Glad yours is better though, whatever it was!