How come everyone else has fluffy chicks and mine are ugly? :)

[CluckyCharms]

Hi y'all,

I'm wondering why virtually every picture I see of baby chicks - they are fluffy and beautiful and alert and standing on their feet...posted as "newly hatched" or "new".

Mine don't look anything remotely like fluffies until day 3 of their little lives at least - sometimes day 4! They are ugly...and have their chickfuzz pasted to their bodies by the slimy coating the membranes left on them while hatching. This dries and then they're crusty (and nothing I do while petting them rubs it off). They look like a 1940s actor with that "hard gel" in his hair. Additionally, they certainly don't walk around and stand upright until at least day 2. The first day their toes are all weird looking and they wobble around like a bobblehead on a bumpy highway. By day 2 or 3 their toes always straighten out by themselves and they're standing nice and tall.

I thought it was perhaps because people were saying they were new when they weren't, but when I received my EEs and gb from MPC they were absolutely flawlessly gorgeous birds (and they're not even standard breeds, lol). Talk about full, and fluffy and real lookers...and they were supposedly shipped at 1 day old.

Are y'all giving baths and blow drying baby chicks?? Or....doing something that I am not?

RE the title - I mean mine are ugly until around day 4 when their crustiness finally goes away and they become fluffy - then they're gorgeous too. lol

 

[Hennyhandler]

Mine are usually wet like that for about a day. Maybe the reason yours are taking so long is because you have your humidity too high. They get so wet that it takes them a long time to dry off. I don't know for sure I was just thinking it could be a possibility.

 

[Dingo]

Could also be low humidity causing the membranes to stick.

 

[stevetone]

We need pictures of these ugly chicks!

(thinking a new contest may be in order...)

 

[CluckyCharms]

I just saw a post with a brand new chick that had just hatched out of a shell (still in the bator) and he was born with hardly any slime. Mine are always *very* slimy and sticky and just yucky looking. Sooo...yup, I think it's a humidity issue. Humidity is around 50% during incubation, sometimes 55% from day 1 to 18 but ...I also live in a humid area, so I'm not sure what I can do about getting rid of the humidity in the bator. There are air plugs and those are always removed until lockdown. There's also a fan by the bator so I can't do much else I don't think. One hatch was 45% humidity for about a week, but that was because the humidity was lower outside for some reason.

The chicks are always fluffy and beautiful by day 4 but boy oh boy are they ugly before then. LOL

 

[lhawes]

Our last hatch we had humidity around 40ish during incubation and about 70 during lockdown. We had all four egg hatch and out of those three fluffed up fairly good but the last one took about a day longer, and still had some of the crusty gel looking stuff on the back for about another day. So not sure if it is humidity related or not..

 

[aoxa]

I get one or two of these a hatch. Never any more.

How long do you leave them in the incubator? I find if you take them out after 24 hours, they dry better under a heat lamp.

I do think slimy chicks results from them not eating all the albumen before hatching. That seems to be what's making them gross.

Here is a day old NN that was the only chick like this last hatch.

This silkie had a bit of it on it's crest.

But this barred rock was perfectly fluffy after a day.

 

[Quyen Le]

I got some like you said when humidity was too low (open incubator often) and take chicks out of the incubator too soon when brooder is not warm enough.

 

[WaterFowl209]

Perhaps it could also be do to the quality of the breeding stock

 

[aoxa]

Perhaps it could also be do to the quality of the breeding stock

I don't think so.

If you bought a dozen eggs (or collected them) all from the same source, and stuck 6 under a broody, and 6 in an incubator, the broody chicks would be fluffy and adorable, while some of the incubator chicks don't look the same for a while. Broody chicks dry quickly in comparison.