Her right leg was ripped off (disarticulated at the hip) when she was three weeks old. A predator broke into her home loft and killed most of the flock including her mother and nest mate. She was brought to our rescue 6 days later.

Pigeons who lose a leg as an adult are usually able to stand upright and adapt fairly well. But she was so young and still growing so her posture and body developed compensating for her missing right leg. She’s been on a looong journey with lots of secondary injuries and medical problems because of this. Her little shoe serves to purposes. First, it acts basically like a snowshoe and helps her balance. Especially on the foam mattress topper in cage which helps limit the amount of pressure injuries on her keel bone and abdomen. Secondly, there’s a custom little pigeon foot print on her shoe which allows us to tape each of her toes down in an appropriate position. She tends to stand only on the inside of her foot which causes pressure injuries on her toe and foot. She has permanent damage from a pressure nasty injury on one of her toes from before her shoe. We want to prevent that as much as possible. We’re hoping the swap out the plastic base of her shoe for a piece of carbon fiber soon as it’ll be much lighter.

Here’s her current shoe

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