I loved reading all the posts about Pheasants on this forum - I have a cock pheasant in my garden everyday at the moment, with a really bad limp. He is generally ok at getting about and pretty fast as soon as I appear with some seed for him. Do I just leave the limp to let nature take its course?
He has started, after some 'whispering' (aka patience!!!)eating from my hand and the kids are very fond of him but with that comes a natural 'what can we do?'.....happy to hear your thoughts....
Best wishes
Jack
Hi Jack, I have pheasants that come to the garden as well, at one point we had 12! We had a male that got so tame that he would come and hand feed, he would come into the garage when I was getting the corn. In case you don't use this you can get a 20kg sack of mixed grain for birds for around £8-9, it saves using the good bird seed for the pheasants. Anyway to answer your question, chickens/pheasants can get something called bumble foot, where the foot will get swollen and they will hold it up and limp, we had one like this but not the fellow that hand fed, which healed on its own, so it may have just been hurt. You can get medicine to treat this but I can't remember if you put it in the water or mix in the food. Your local vets should be able to help. Seeing he hand feeds and if the medicine goes in the food, you may get him to take it, if it goes in the water you could get a wee bowl for him to drink from, ours use a plastic dog bowl. It may just be something that will heal in time. If he is tame enough to hand feed, you could catch him and take him to the vet to be examined! Joking. Good luck.
Edit, just had a read about Bumble Foot, it talks about chickens having it, whom you can easily handle and take to the vet for either an antibiotic injection, and or drain the actual swelling, you can bath the foot with Epsom salts and warm water, Mmm not so handy to do any of this with a pheasant! If that is what it is, hopefully it will,be okay.