Frida, the bionic chicken
Well Frida went under the knife yesterday, and we’ve brought her home today. She is now a Bionic Chicken!
They’ve had to pin Frida’s leg – essentially a titanium pin is inserted along the bone, with three small screws connecting it to the bone on the inside, and to an external pin on the outside. So the broken pieces of bone are held stable in relation to each other, and can’t (fingers crossed) move or twist at all.
Pauline wasn’t able to line the break up perfectly – as you can see from the X-ray, in one plane the break is nice and level, and in the other it’s offset slightly. It shouldn’t be a problem, but it may mean that she’ll have a limp, depending on what sort of length difference there ends up being. But Pauline reckons it’s all looking as good as she could have hoped. Strong, healthy bones.
Frida’s going to be confined inside for the duration of her recuperation. In a small cage (45 cm × 45 cm) for the next week, and then moved up to a 1 m × 1 m cage for three or four weeks after that. In theory she could be healed within as little as three weeks, but we’re going to take it slow and make as sure as we can that everything is ok.
Everything is thoroughly bandaged up, and I have to give her physiotherapy three times a day – flexing and extending the leg, so that the joints don’t stiffen up too much. In theory she should be able to put weight on the leg whenever she wants to.
So now it’s just a matter of taking it one day at a time, and seeing how we go. She’s still laying (laid an egg at the vets’ on Thursday, much to everyone’s amusement/amazement), but hopefully she’ll stop. She needs all the calcium she gets to go into building new bone!
Tags: broken leg, chicken physiotherapy, Frida
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