Chicken’s beak works like a tool to them. The beaks aid them in eating, drinking, exploring, transporting, digging, communicating, and grooming. But unfortunately, a broken beak or beak injury to your chicken is common.
The beak injury can result from the fight with a predator or colliding with an object. Once the beak becomes broken, you need to know what to feed a chicken with a broken beak.
You can feed normal food to your chicken that you give them in their regular everyday diet. Avoid providing extra supplements or vitamins to your chicken to fix the broken beak. It can negatively affect your chicken’s health.
One recommendation is to give food in a deep dish. Then add water to the food so that your birds face fewer obstructions in eating them.
Throughout today’s guide, we will discuss more details about this concerning issue. So, sharply read this guide till the end.
About Your Chicken’s Beak
Keratin is the main element of your chicken’s beak. Keratin is known for its toughness, and it’s an insoluble protein. This same protein helps to make hooves, antlers, horns, and human fingernails.
Two halves consist of a normal beak. And the lower and upper mandibles contain the hard keratin layer-covered bones. It is more likely to the human fingernails.
Compared to the lower mandible, the top mandible is slightly longer. And roughly the mandibles length two-thirds contains the nerves and blood vessels.
Also Read: Can Chickens Be Left Alone For A Week?
What Causes Your Chicken’s Beak To Break?
Most birds use their beak the same way humans use their hands. So it’s no surprise that your chickens use their beaks in almost everything. From exploring to grooming and eating to grasping, your chicken uses their beaks for everything.
Your bird’s little beak injury is very common. However, your bird’s beak can get injured or broken for the following reasons:
- Fighting with other chickens or predators
- Collisions
- Exploring
- Grooming
- Eating
- Digging
If for any of the above reasons, your chicken’s beak gets broken, you need to treat the beak and fix them. You will get more ideas about fixing your chicken’s beak by seeing this video:
What To Feed A Chicken With A Broken Beak?
The simple answer is feed your chicken the normal food that they regularly eat. But with the broken beak, they may face difficulty in eating food. Therefore make a wet mash by adding water to your chicken’s food. And it will make their feed-eating process less painful.
Also, we recommend replacing the old feed with freshly mixed feed every few hours. And, remove the dirt from the dish and clean it properly.
Due to the broken beak, your chicken can stop eating or drinking. Moreover, it causes incredible pain to your chicken. Simply, the beak injury endangers your chicken’s ability to survive. So you must take care of your birds and feed them carefully.
Due to your bird’s beak injuries don’t alter the diet of your chicken. Drastically altering your chicken’s diet can negatively affect its health. So avoid suddenly offering supplements or foods to your birds that they ordinarily don’t eat.
If you offer such food, suddenly it can make them unwell. Moreover, it can create serious digestive health crises by altering gut bacteria.
Therefore don’t overdo anything. Just provide your chicken with the regular feed type that they eat. But ensure they can eat the food perfectly without any problems.
How To Deal with Your Chicken’s Broken Beak?
Beak injury causes pain to your chicken, and sometimes it can suffer from permanent damage. Usually, minor beak injuries are easy to fix. But if the injury is larger, we recommend you consult with a veteran.
However, primarily to deal with your chicken’s broken beak, follow the tips below:
- If the beak injury is minor, it doesn’t require any treatment. But in this case, you must monitor the beak to check whether it’s re-growing normally or not.
- In case of fight-related injury, we recommend you keep your injured hens separate from the other birds.
- It’s better to use an emery board or the dog nail clippers to shape the broken beak.
- Ensure that you are not trimming the beak too much, as it can cause damage.
- If bleeding starts from the beak, treat the wound immediately and stop the bleeding.
- Don’t expect the cracked beak of your chicken will grow together. Rather over time, it will grow slowly.
- Over the split beak’s tip, you can glue the canine nail caps.
- Provide feed in a deep dish so that your birds can eat properly.
- Severely torn or amputated beaks can’t grow back. So in this case you must find a way first to feed your injured chicken and keep her hydrated.
Along with following the above treatment, we recommend you follow this video to know more details:
Frequently Asked Questions
What to Do If A Chicken Breaks Its Beak?
If your chicken breaks its beak, first off, you should stop its bleeding and treat its wound. After that, using an emery board or dog nail clippers, shape the beak. Avoid trimming your hen’s beak too much. The broken beak won’t grow perfectly together.
Can A Bird Recover From A Broken Beak?
Usually, the bird recovers from the broken beak. But generally, the beak doesn’t grow back together or repair itself. And recovering the beak requires enough time.
Can Chicken Feel Pain In Their Beaks?
Yes, your bird feels pain when their beaks are broken, or you trimmed its cracked beak.
End Note
Hopefully, this guide on what to feed a chicken with a broken beak has been helpful to you. A broken chicken beak is such a problem that no one wants to face. But unfortunately, the chicken keepers may need to deal with this issue frequently.
So when your chicken’s beak becomes broken, you must know what to eat your birds in that condition. Optimistically, you know that even with the broken beak, you can feed your chicken normal food following the regular diet. But mix water with the food to make their eating process easier.
However, after going through the above article, you can comment if you have any questions. ASAP we will reply to you!
