- Sep 28, 2015
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I need advice for how to raise a chick that was hatched in the wild. My daughter and I were feeding a feral mamma hen and her babies in the back of a parking lot this afternoon. They were super cute and I was just letting my little girl sprinkle the bread ends from the loaf of bread we had just bought, sitting on the curb and having a peaceful moment to enjoy the cute babies. Someone circled the back of the lot by us and ran them over, just to be mean I think. Well the momma hen died and so did one of the chicks, most of the babies ran off into the bushes but one of the babies just stood there so I scooped it up, tried to find the others but couldn't catch any of them. We brought the one we could catch home and it peeped and peeped as loud as it could for a few hours and only recently fell asleep. I feel awful for it. My other pullets are about 25 weeks old so I can't put the chick in with them but she seems very lonely and distressed. I need advice on what to do for it as I'm still fairly new to chickens and I've never raised a chick that had bonded with its mom instead of people. It's skittish and wouldn't drink from a bowl or eat mashed hard boiled egg. I dunked its beak into the water but eventually got it to drink droplets from my finger. Tomorrow I'm going to get some more chick starter and keep the heatlamp on for it in the brooder for tonight. What else can/should I do?