Is this wry neck?

[Dr Evy]

Hello friends,

I went to feed my chicks Sunday morning and one of the older ones was not in the brooder. It walked over to me from the corner of the room. It was still warm so I don’t think it was out that long, but now its head is like permanently cocked to the side a little bit. I thought maybe it was just holding it’s neck like that, but it’s still like that. The chick seems fine other than that. After consulting with a few friends, it was said that it possibly has wry neck. I wanted to confirm before treating him for wry neck that that is what it really is.

If it is wry neck I plan to treat with vitamin E. I can’t treat with B complex until I take them off of medicated feed. If it’s not necessary I don’t really want to buy another bag of non-medicated feed, but I would be willing to. Thoughts on that would be appreciated too.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Happy Chooks]

Looks pretty normal. Most wry neck I've seen, their head is tilted up and back in a very wrong looking position. There used to be a great article here on wry neck, let me see if I can find it.

 

[Eggcessive]

Yes, that sounds like wry neck/torticolis. Some may also walk backwards or in circles. It can be a neurological symptom of a head or neck injury, a vitamin E or thiamine deficiency, and in older chickens diseases that can affect the brain. There is no reason to avoid thiamine (vitamin B 1) if they are getting medicated feed. It is only important to avoid it when they are getting Corid for an outbreak of coccidiosis. In young chicks, since the wry neck may be from a thiamine deficiency as well as an E deficiency,,I would go ahead and give some thiamine or B complex, as well as a little bit of cooked egg for selenium. Do this for at least 2 weeks. If the chick gets worse, or is unable to eat and drink well, you will need to feed it mushy chick feed with water and egg. Let us know how it gets along.

 

[StinkyAcres]

There is no reason to avoid thiamine (vitamin B 1) if they are getting medicated feed.

I just want to make sure I understand. The Amprolium in the feed won't block the vitamin B supplements?

 

[StinkyAcres]

There is no reason to avoid thiamine (vitamin B 1) if they are getting medicated feed.

I just want to make sure I understand. The Amprolium in the feed won't block the vitamin B supplements?

This article says, "you don’t want to supplement with thiamine while you are feeding medicated chick feed. The Amprolium would block absorption of the thiamine, anyway."

 

[Dr Evy]

Yes, that sounds like wry neck/torticolis. Some may also walk backwards or in circles. It can be a neurological symptom of a head or neck injury, a vitamin E or thiamine deficiency, and in older chickens diseases that can affect the brain. There is no reason to avoid thiamine (vitamin B 1) if they are getting medicated feed. It is only important to avoid it when they are getting Corid for an outbreak of coccidiosis. In young chicks, since the wry neck may be from a thiamine deficiency as well as an E deficiency,,I would go ahead and give some thiamine or B complex, as well as a little bit of cooked egg for selenium. Do this for at least 2 weeks. If the chick gets worse, or is unable to eat and drink well, you will need to feed it mushy chick feed with water and egg. Let us know how it gets along.

Ok so I’ve been giving him vitamin E, but I don’t have D complex so if you think I should definitely give that too I can pick some up, otherwise will the E be enough? Also, I’ve been feeding all of the chicks scrambled eggs.
The chick isn’t better, but isn’t worse. It also almost seems like it’s more friendly since I noticed the head tilt.

 

[Eggcessive]

This article says, "you don’t want to supplement with thiamine while you are feeding medicated chick feed. The Amprolium would block absorption of the thiamine, anyway."

I disagree with that article. Amprollium mimics thiamine in the coccidia organism, to cause the coccidia organism to take that, and then the coccidia will become deficient and die. There is very little amprollium in medicated feed anyway, and I stopped using that years ago. Any feed that your chick takes already has some thiamine (B1) in it. The only time to limit extra thiamine is when giving a treatment for an out break of coccidiosis when you would be feeding extra thiamine the coccidia organism. But here we are treating wry neck, and both a thiamine deficiency or vitamin E deficiency at hatch can be causes of wry neck in baby chicks. So to give an effective treatment, you should give a small amount of extra thiamine and 400 IU of vitamin E. Here is the article I am referring to about Corid mimicking thiamine, read the paragraph above the highlighted area:
https://www.corid.com/CoridProducts...dia at a,develop natural immunity to coccidia.