Rooster with shaking and limpy leg

[AtomicVulture]

hello, i have a rooster named Tony.

recently he began losing weight, and having a bit of trouble jumping.
he loves to follow people around and try and steal their food, sadly i dont know his age as i.. “adopted” him (our neighbours had him and recently destroyed their hut and living area, so the migrated over to our side of the fence and now theyre mine and, atleast mostly, are happy)

my guess is about 3-5 years as he does look old physically, but hes a red/light brown rhode island (i think, or atleast thats the main of his genes) and he has rather unkempt feathers

Tony lacks a tongue, i believe he was born/hatched without it because i never saw any scaring, up until now hes been a good weight from what i remember.

i do feed him personally when i can, and i supervise majority of the time to make sure none of our other stray chickens steal his food (the “stray” chickens arent wild they just aren’t able to be introduced to a flock yet due to my 2 flocks being aggressive with newcomers)

there is a possibility he ate something poisonous or moldy/rotten because hes stupid and roams about 3 acres of our land freely (he doesn’t bother with the rest)

recently he attempted to jump onto a gate (this was about 3-4 days ago, he was sick then too) and fell, id say he fell about 3ft-ish so that’s probably why his leg is limpy, but the shaking i don’t understand, i have been debating taking him to a vet but i can only really ask my parents to do that.

i drenched (?) him yesterday, he does probably have leg mites, but the weight i was thinking worms and idk what to there

he struggles to swallow food sometimes due to not having a tongue but he usually seems to get on fine

and recently (about 4 weeks ago ish) he lost all of his tail feathers, we have pigs and i think the assholes ripped his feathers out but i never saw feathers in their pen.

i know that some birds lose their feathers to stress/spooks idk if that applies to chickens or not but maybe something internally happened and it stressed him out?

i dont feel any issue with his leg and i dont see bruises but i dont actually know where hes hurt it.

any suggestions?

edit : he has a swollen foot i noticed just now, but i see no bump, its warm and im going to urge my parents for a vet visit.

edit 2 : ive given him a short muscle soak (about 10-15 minutes) idk how long i should do it for but im thinking sprain from when he jumped, i got a terrible photo of his under..foot area, it has a few black-brownish spots but so does his other foot which is perfectly fine (from what i know)

idk if its bumblefoot or not but his foot isnt flakey or shiney.

he is eating and drinking

 

[Wyorp Rock]

How is he doing?

I agree with you, it looks like he does have Scaly Leg Mites. You mentioned you drenched him - what does that mean, did you use Ivermectin Pour On or something else?

His foot does look a bit puffy from what I can see. Soaking like you are dealing is a good idea. Hopefully that will relieve some of the inflammation and the swelling will go down. He may have sprained it, hard to know.

For the Scaly Leg Mites, you can also apply Vaseline or Coconut Oil to the legs, working this up and under the scales of the feet and legs to help soothe and heal the legs, the oil/vaseline will also help smother any mites too.

It's good that you are taking care of him. Do the best you can. If he struggles to eat with his tongue missing, then try offering wet mushy feed to see if he can manage that a little better.

 

[AtomicVulture]

How is he doing?

I agree with you, it looks like he does have Scaly Leg Mites. You mentioned you drenched him - what does that mean, did you use Ivermectin Pour On or something else?

His foot does look a bit puffy from what I can see. Soaking like you are dealing is a good idea. Hopefully that will relieve some of the inflammation and the swelling will go down. He may have sprained it, hard to know.

For the Scaly Leg Mites, you can also apply Vaseline or Coconut Oil to the legs, working this up and under the scales of the feet and legs to help soothe and heal the legs, the oil/vaseline will also help smother any mites too.

It's good that you are taking care of him. Do the best you can. If he struggles to eat with his tongue missing, then try offering wet mushy feed to see if he can manage that a little better.

sorry havent checked this for a while, hes been separated and put in his own run with all the necessities (and has been gaining weight, and gaining energy)

he still has a swollen foot but no spots for bumblefoot, we own over 40 chickens and we cant afford to pay over 200 dollars on a rooster who could be near his old age

i hate to say it but we’re going to try and get a diagnosis with no medication. i want to see if its fixable without so much money, again, hes an older rooster and he wasn’t originally mine.

we had a hen get a tumor in her foot about 6-7 years back and we put her down after it got really bad and i dont want him to suffer like she did.

it looked about the same at the start.

if the diagnosis is bad we’re just going to put him down, we have too many roosters and hes not exactly a special one, i love him alot but i cant give special treatment to him just because hes kind.

the drench was cydectin, its meant for cows and deer but works fine for chickens with just a drop on the back of their head.

i understand putting him down is a bad thing for alot of people as their chickens are like babies to them, and i would like to say mine are, but something like a tumor is stressful for removal and can be tricky if its not done right, god knows what it is but it wont go away on its own.

if we do end up putting him down, he will be memorialised i promise, hes a sweetheart and of course i would be sad to never see him again but hes unhappy isolated like he is and vets (especially for chickens) are super expensive here.

obviously ill let him free from his run for a few days before he gets put down if it comes to that, but like i said, it looks the same as how my old hens tumor started.

 

[AtomicVulture]

How is he doing?

I agree with you, it looks like he does have Scaly Leg Mites. You mentioned you drenched him - what does that mean, did you use Ivermectin Pour On or something else?

His foot does look a bit puffy from what I can see. Soaking like you are dealing is a good idea. Hopefully that will relieve some of the inflammation and the swelling will go down. He may have sprained it, hard to know.

For the Scaly Leg Mites, you can also apply Vaseline or Coconut Oil to the legs, working this up and under the scales of the feet and legs to help soothe and heal the legs, the oil/vaseline will also help smother any mites too.

It's good that you are taking care of him. Do the best you can. If he struggles to eat with his tongue missing, then try offering wet mushy feed to see if he can manage that a little better.

i know this was a while ago now, but hes still alive!

i would like to ask if you know any treatments for gout, as thats what the vet said he probably has (common in roosters apparently)

hes looking much better these days, his tail has grown back (with a special white feather, but hes had them before) and hes getting better with the walking.

i found out that his weight loss was due to the fact he couldnt keep up with the hens while eating, ive been feeding him separately from then on and then putting him back in the run with his ladies, his foot hasnt gotten worse or better, hes just seemed to adapt.

we got rid of about 10 roosters recently, one of which was a huge bully to him, but we had 4 that remained for a little bit while we found a new home for them, and he showed one of them up when it tried to enter his coop.

he was in a little trouble when this was first posted because he couldn’t fight any roosters off him and they just picked on him relentlessly, but we made a whole new run to hold the roosters while we found some new homes, so he got to be in the “retirement home” coop hehe

we were just waiting out the gout but it just refuses to go away, i am feeding him some veges here and there (from what i know gout is caused by poor diet so im trying to fix that, as he was a scrap chicken and we never thought it was bad until june)

we cant afford medical things (way too much money over here) but we can afford some dietary things for him or some kind of living upgrade.

he seems to be able to perch now but in june he could barely jump to my knee but now hes jumping the coop fence, which is waist height.

hoping he has good news from here on

 

[Wyorp Rock]

i know this was a while ago now, but hes still alive!

i would like to ask if you know any treatments for gout, as thats what the vet said he probably has (common in roosters apparently)

hes looking much better these days, his tail has grown back (with a special white feather, but hes had them before) and hes getting better with the walking.

i found out that his weight loss was due to the fact he couldnt keep up with the hens while eating, ive been feeding him separately from then on and then putting him back in the run with his ladies, his foot hasnt gotten worse or better, hes just seemed to adapt.

we got rid of about 10 roosters recently, one of which was a huge bully to him, but we had 4 that remained for a little bit while we found a new home for them, and he showed one of them up when it tried to enter his coop.

he was in a little trouble when this was first posted because he couldn’t fight any roosters off him and they just picked on him relentlessly, but we made a whole new run to hold the roosters while we found some new homes, so he got to be in the “retirement home” coop hehe

we were just waiting out the gout but it just refuses to go away, i am feeding him some veges here and there (from what i know gout is caused by poor diet so im trying to fix that, as he was a scrap chicken and we never thought it was bad until june)

we cant afford medical things (way too much money over here) but we can afford some dietary things for him or some kind of living upgrade.

he seems to be able to perch now but in june he could barely jump to my knee but now hes jumping the coop fence, which is waist height.

hoping he has good news from here on

If it's Gout, you can try Tart Cherry which can be found on the vitamin aisle of stores like Walmart, CVS, etc. I believe @MysteryChicken knows the dosing.

 

[MysteryChicken]

If it's Gout, you can try Tart Cherry which can be found on the vitamin aisle of stores like Walmart, CVS, etc. I believe @MysteryChicken knows the dosing.

Dosing is according to the size of bird.
Bantam 1 capsule 2-3 times a day, large to extra large 2-3 capsules 1-2 times a day.

Extra large can mean turkey, which may include 3 capsules 3 times a day.