Horrible shipping experience and need some advice

You are doing all you can for the little one. Continue to care for her but shift your attention to the healthy ones. Try not to get too attached to her. Sometimes things happen we don't like or understand.

Sorry to hear about your traumatic experience. I agree that trying to keep your cool because you have little kids around is tough, although it also makes us stay calm and not give in to freaking out. I ordered my first 8 chicks from MPC and they all arrived in great shape. As for your sick or injured chick, the hard part is not knowing whether it was injured during transport or just weak to begin with. If the chick was injured, trying to nurse it back to health makes sense. If it is a "defective" chick, you may be better off just alerting MPC about it and getting a refund.

While all of my MPC chicks arrived in good shape, I had one who had a continuously messy, poopie rear end. I treated it as "pasty butt",cleaning off it's rear several times a day for the first 6 weeks, probably once a day for the next two weeks and then having to give it a full sink bath about once a week through the next 5 months including a trip to the vet and numerous requests for help from this forum. When spring came and the weather started warming up, I decided to see if I could just ignore her messy bottom for awhile, since some folks on the forum said that they had similar experiences without major issue. Several weeks later, while checking for eggs in the late morning, I found her dead on the floor under the nesting box. I don't really know why she died, but I suspect she was egg bound and can't help but wonder whether the lack of a weekly bath caused the problem.

I still feel horrible, but mostly I'm kicking myself for not "culling" her back in October when I realized that the condition wasn't going to go away and she was going to be continual extra work and always more susceptible to frostbite and disease. She was a sweet little thing who tolerated her weekly baths and blow dries with good humor so it was hard for me to make the decision to kill her...no experience with killing chickens or even killing my catch when fishing, but a quick death would probably have been kinder than whatever she went through.

Have you asked MPC for advice on how to proceed?

I contacted them about the situation but I didn't even consider that she could have been defective from the start. I have had the culling issue in the back of head the whole time. I feel like if I took that road I will always wonder if I could have saved her. I haven't seen any physical improvement in 48 hours at this point. Her attitude changes hour to hour. How do you know it's "time"? I am trying very hard to not get attached.

FreckledFarmer said:

... How do you know it's "time"? I am trying very hard to not get attached.

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I'm not the best one to ask about that because I seem to attach the second I see the sweet fluffy darlings. Looking back, I should have decided that it was "time" when it became apparent that this wasn't "pasty butt" or "pasting up", but some sort of anatomical abnormality that meant that every darn time she pooped, it stuck to her back-end until she was carrying around a huge blob of nastiness. Since I was willing to bathe her weekly (took well over an hour to bath her and blow dry her completely so that she could go out in the cold again) she did OK...still walked with a strange waddle that the other chickens didn't have, which supported my diagnosis that she had some sort of anatomical abnormality. I had a second chance to decide it's "time" when I decided I wasn't going to bathe her every week, but instead I thought I'd just see how it went and she died anyway.

So, your situation is different, but if it were me, I'd probably continue to nurse her for another day or two and see if she gets stronger. If she sustained injury to her bone or muscle, I'd think that she would heal pretty fast. If the damage was to an internal organ, I'm guessing she won't make it regardless of what you do. So either one of those options takes the "is it time" question off the table. If, however she seems stronger, but still crippled, meaning she is perky and alert and taking food and water, but can't move you have the decision as to whether you are going to continue go to heroic lengths to keep this bird alive when she probably won't have anything like a normal life.

I hope you'll keep us updated, because I'm rooting for you.

Final Update: The little chick past away last night. It's kind of a relief. I felt like we were watching her go down hill. She was starting to turn her head around almost backwards and her feathers looked like they were thinning on her wings. If she wasn't only a day old when we got her I would have thought she had Marek's (our chicks were all vac. at the hatchery). Thank you for all of your help and support. It's very sad but I am glad she is no longer in pain. We have 6 beautiful healthy chicks to focus on.

So sorry to hear about all of this, dont let it discourage you! Have fun with your precious babies!