Broken beak

One of my cockerels chipped the middle out of his beak. It doesn't look like it bled or anything, just broke right to the quick. I trimmed the outside edges with a nail clipper to round it out for him.

The issue is now his top beak is shorter than the bottom. The top does not overlap the bottom like it should. I see there is a bit of non living bottom beak but I remember being advised never to trim the bottom.

Should I do anything? He seems to eat fine. But it just looks so wrong. And i want to take him to Wetakiwin in February...

I trimmed the bottom once and it took forever to stop bleeding. The top will grow back and meet up with the bottom. They will use the bottom like a scoop to eat until the top heals. Just like a beak trimmed bird does.

Thanks hidden!

As if -38C is not enough There is always something new to learn and cope with!

My replacement POL brown layers I bought last spring all had their beaks trimmed prior to me getting them. I understand why it is done, but if it was my choice, I wouldn't do it! It just looks wrong! And these ones looked as if it was done poorly! I picked them up at the beginning of July and their beaks were supposedly trimmed a couple weeks prior. It is now the third week of January, and their beaks have not grown back to where they should be yet! They are still very short. I give them both Lime Stone and Oyster Shell soluble grit for extra calcium, thinking it should aid in growing their beaks back but it is a very slow process!

Top beaks are highly unlikely to grow back completely - I had some birds with hatchery-trimmed beaks years ago, and they still looked wrong when the birds died of old age. Never again.

One important thing to note is that beak trimming interferes enormously with grooming and parasite control - in a fairly recent study, birds with trimmed beaks were found to have more than 10 times as many parasites as their intact sisters! Makes sense when you think about it, and watch how they use their beaks.

I used to have a rooster with a weak beak, when it reached a certain point it broke off on the top. Don't know if that would be genetics or just damaged.