Causes of leg edema in young ostriches

Due to the physiological structure, the ostrich has two toes, the inner toe mainly bears the weight, the external toe helps to maintain balance, the leg supports the whole body through the accessory joint, and there is no muscle tissue around the accessory joint, so it is easy to occur dislocation and joint swelling in the early stage. Surgical massage reduction and bandage fixation are often used to help the dislocation recover. For the enlargement of the joint, cold compress or local closure first, and then bandaged and fixed later, can get good results. It may also be due to nutritional imbalance or deficiency, which often leads to leg disease. These factors are:

Calcium and phosphorus imbalance is the main component of bone tissue. During the rearing period, the bones of ostriches grow rapidly and need to get enough calcium and phosphorus from their feed. The imbalance of calcium and phosphorus in feed will affect the absorption of both, and then affect the calcification of bones. Long-term feeding of this kind of feed will aggravate the deformation of bones, such as bending of long bones, weakness in standing, and even paralysis. In production, some people often mistakenly think that ostriches have thin legs and it is difficult to support a large body, and excessive calcium is added to the diet (such as excessive stone powder, shellfish feed and high calcium forage, etc.), resulting in an imbalance in the proportion of calcium and phosphorus. In addition, excess calcium also affects the absorption of zinc and manganese, which also affects bone formation and causes swollen joints and slippery legs. Experiments have proved that in the nestling stage, the calcium content in the feed is 1.2%-1.5%, and the phosphorus content is 0.6%-0.7%. It can also be supplemented with appropriate amount of easily absorbed zinc and manganese in nestling feed. Due to the improper supply of protein and energy levels, due to people's expectation for the rapid growth of ostriches and the lack of knowledge about the protein and energy requirements of ostriches at different growth stages, it is common for young birds to be blindly fed with "high-grade" concentrate, which makes the growth rate of young birds too fast, but the development of muscles and bones are not synchronized, resulting in bone deformation, instability and even paralysis. Vitamin deficiency young birds can not stand up, paralysis, can also be caused by vitamin deficiency. Performance for muscle dystrophy, and even contraction weakness, lying on the ground for a long time can not afford, and then aggravate the degradation of muscle, especially skeletal muscle. Early intramuscular injection of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and selenium has a significant effect. Vitamin D is directly involved in ossification of bone, its deficiency hinders the deposition of bone calcium and phosphorus, and the lack of vitamin B2 leads to the curl of phalangeal bone. Therefore, the supplement of vitamin D and vitamin B2 is very important in actual production. However, vitamins are easily damaged, so we must pay attention to the storage time and conditions of feed and use fresh feed as far as possible.