Besides FDA-approved drugs, a replica of your face, and an entire apartment building, there’s a new addition to things you can now make with a 3D printer: prosthetic chicken legs.
A Boston-area chicken named Cicely will soon be the lucky recipient of a $2,500 prosthetic leg, Reuters reports. Owner Andrea Martin’s Black Thistle Farm focuses on chicken rehabilitation. So when Cicely, now three months old, was born with an immobilizing torn tendon, and the veterinarian said it was either euthanasia or a prosthetic, Martin tells Reuters it was an easy choice.
“It was a no-brainer,” Martin said. “She needs to be able to live a normal life.”
The procedure, which has not been performed before, will be done at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Her right leg will be amputated today and a CT-scan of her left leg will be used to print a 3D prosthetic. Two weeks of R&R later, Cicely will come back to Tufts to be fitted. Dr. Emi Knafo, the veterinarian performing the surgery, told Reuters that the procedure has been done for other kinds of animals, but she thinks Cicely will be the first chicken.
It’s not, however, the first time Martin has spent a lot of money to take care of her charges. Last year she spent $3,000 on a chicken hysterectomy.