Health Concerns

[Megan81159]

We just received our shipment of 6 chicks this morning. 5 silkies and 1 golden laced polish. They all seem to be doing well except one, a grey silkie. With them being newborn babies, I expect a good amount of sleeping and lethargy, but this one seems a bit more tired than the rest. She's eating and drinking well and she's moving, but a lot of the times whenever I see her, she's seems to be in half-asleep mode, with her head drawn in so that the back of her neck gets bunched up and all that. Another thing is that I think she seems to hold her wings a bit further away from her body, whereas the others' wings lay pretty flat against their sides. She's also a bit clumsier than the rest, a notable symptom my last chick experienced a few days before it died. I suppose it could be nothing as the difference between her and her sisters' behavior isn't really that noticeable, but a similar thing happened with my last batch of chicks, and one of them died. Granted, that last one was a week old whereas the ones I have now are like one-two days old, but I'm scared that if I do what I did last time, which was wait for her to get better and think of it as me being paranoid, the same thing will happen again and the chick will die. What should I do? Would adding sugar to the water to give her an energy boost help?

 

[newmarch2014]

There is a chick electrolyte solution that I used this year when I first brought them home for 2 days to give them a little boost as they recuperated from the shipping trip. You may want to pick some up.
Is your wimpy one pooping normally? I almost lost one last year due to what I suppose was Cocci since once I separated her and treated her with Corrid and babied her along, enticing her to eat and drink she started to improve after about 3 days.
When I treated the others their poop stopped being mostly runny after the 3 days too. At that point they were about a week or more old but the poop was a big indicator that things were not as they should be.
One of mine this year was a little shaky for the first day but I did the electrolyte solution and all in general seemed to have an easier first few days than last year as far as strength and vigorously eating and drinking.

 

[Megan81159]

I haven't tried an electrolyte solution, but I have been giving her some sugar water with her feed, and she's looking a little better now. When I found her this morning she was definitely worse, tripping around, having trouble getting up when she fell, and becoming very disinterested in food. I'll try the electrolyte thing. Do you know what the cause of this thing is? Because only one is affected; the rest seem fine.

 

[Megan81159]

As for the pooping bit, I haven't seen her expel anything so far this morning, but I'll keep watching out for it. I checked her bottom and I don't see any dried poo blocking her vent.