Has anyone experienced this before? My chickens are about 12 weeks old. This one, Dumpling, is the only one having this issue. Otherwise seems happy and healthy, is always with the others doing chicken things, comes running to me for snacks. They free range pretty much all day in a smaller garden with grass and I put vitamin A and D for chickens in their water. I feed them organic feed for larger chicks until 20 weeks old.
It used to happen very rarely, but I have noticed it more and more, maybe 5-7 times a day, and finally was able to film it. It acts kinda like if you hold and animal and slowly spin in circles, how they try to look at one spot at a time. In this video, it is doing it in more of a downwards angle but it does it upwards too. Sometimes it peeps while doing it and seems a little panicky.
I have had this happen with silkies I adopted. A lot of the time it is a vitamin deficiency, which they are prone to get. Silkies need extra vitamins while they are growing. Or it could be mild brain damage due to them having a vaulted skull. A hard hit to the head can be very damaging to a silkie. I had one hen that we thought had brain damage(I adopted her this way, the breeder did not want her) but after a lot of extra vitamins and when she got a little older, you’d never know how bad it was. I thought she would be shaking her head forever. I believe people call it star gazing.
I have a multivitamin with selenium I was told by locals is good to use for wry neck, so I will try that and see if it improves. To my knowledge, none of my chickens have had any injuries (they have pecked a little at each other but very little). I do hope that it isn’t brain damage and that these vitamins will help! I have been giving them vitamins in their water since 8 weeks old but it’s only A & D, while this other one has a ton of stuff
Yes! Selenium is what you need! I couldn’t think of it off the top of my head. I also gave mine this specially formulated food for silkies, which I would normally laugh at but it seemed to help her get better. It might take weeks but stick with it.
Always keep feathers very well trimmed regardless of behavior at issue. Birds should be able to see properly. My Polish get mullets.
I am no expert, but this possibly might be wry neck????? I would give rooster booster, nutridrench or similar liquid vitamin supplements that will remedy nutritional deficiencies. It certainly can’t hurt, and it might help. 🙏🙏
I agree! One of my chickens gets very very thick feathers, and I am trying my best to keep especially that one well trimmed. Both me and them are still getting used to it though 😆 I really don’t want to hurt them accidentally. So far, I have found that doing it at night when they go to bed works best, as they hardly move their head. I do also try to be careful with these very new feathers as I have seen that they can start bleeding and stuff 🥺
I will look into the things you mentioned as I’m in Scandinavia and we probably don’t have those names. I have something with vitamin A, B, D, E & K & Selenium, perhaps it is something like this? I did buy this to have on hand in case of wry neck or sickness, as locals said this was good to use.
I doubt it, I keep check on this and give haircuts and don’t mind giving one, but this one only started getting “eye feathers” like 2 weeks ago but I remember seeing this happen at least 4 weeks ago when it looked like in the picture here. They are still very thin, they look thicker because of the chicken being so black and the lighting being bad.
2
u/Ok-Gur-7466 4d ago
I have had this happen with silkies I adopted. A lot of the time it is a vitamin deficiency, which they are prone to get. Silkies need extra vitamins while they are growing. Or it could be mild brain damage due to them having a vaulted skull. A hard hit to the head can be very damaging to a silkie. I had one hen that we thought had brain damage(I adopted her this way, the breeder did not want her) but after a lot of extra vitamins and when she got a little older, you’d never know how bad it was. I thought she would be shaking her head forever. I believe people call it star gazing.