Chicken Cosmetic Surgery

I went out to feed the chickens yesterday and notices this little girl's beak. I scooped her up and headed to the house so I could fix it.



See how it's crossed? I've never noticed it before. Sometimes crossed beaks are caused by a skull deformity. Maybe that's her issue.



I wrapped her up in a towel so I could use both hands for working. I didn't want her to flap around.



You can kind of see the line where there's extra beak growth. If you enlarge the picture, you'll see a pale area t the very tip of the top part. On the bottom, it's pretty easy to see where it's over grown. It also seems like the side of the bottom beak had grown too far up and wouldn't let the top rest on it properly.



I decided to use the sheep hoof trimmers because they're very sharp and very scissor-like.



Here you can see where I trimmed some of the extra growth from the beak. I don't think this hurts them, because there was no bleeding. I was careful not to cut too much.



Then I used a nail file to smooth the edges and file down more of the beak. The file worked well because it would only take off a teeny bit at a time.



It still isn't perfect, but I guess that's just the way her beak is. At least it's not crossed anymore.



This is her as a chick. Cute isn't she? She always was an oddball chick. I swear, I thought she was on death's door the whole time as a chick. She just acted differently from all the rest of them. She would lay down flat like she was dead, but she was just sleeping. The other chickens picked on her too. She's my "special" girl.