Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Crossed fingers, crossed toes and .....crossed beaks....oh no!

Remember the 13 two day old chicks that we took into our home about 2 weeks ago? Those adorable little bodies that loved Classical Music? Well, they're still here...all 13 of them and growing and eating and listening to music and getting feathers ~ all but 2 of them have lovely, normal, little chicken beaks.

I'd never seen crossed beak before nor even heard of it...at least that I remember. Perhaps my dad humanely took the life of any that we had growing up or perhaps we were among the lucky ones who never saw this defect and so never had to decide what to do with these afflicted ones.

One of our littlest ones has a severe crossed beak...its off to the vet today with Nikki to see if putting it down is best or if we can try to trim the upper beak and use Panetran to try to release the jaw muscle that pulls the lower beak to the side. A second chick has a moderate defect - I believe this one will survive as long as the Panetran can do its work.

I didn't plan on this....it makes me sad. But, as these chicks will likely be picked on by the others and almost certainly have nutritional deficiencies, the most humane thing may be to put them down....

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