Lethargic baby chick

[ChickChickHorray]

Hi all. Yesterday we got an order of eight mail order chicks, they all seem to be doing great, moving about, eating and drinking, except for one. She seems to mostly be sleeping and not wanting to explore with the other chicks or drink much. I’ve heard mixing ‘Save a Chick’ powder in their water could be good and giving it to her in a dropper can be beneficial, but is there anything else I can do for her? Would yogurt be good? Thoughts, suggestions? Thanks!

 

[AshleyFL]

It's so hard when they seem to be in need, but you've given them everything. I had 6 arrive in the mail today and 3 were lethargic and eventually died throughout the day. I hope your little one pulls through. I've read the dropper can drown and I don't know what 'save a chick' is.

 

[alix1011]

I know this is alittle late response so I hope she pulled through. Save a chick has done wonders for my babies . It really helps . It’s like pedialyte for chicks

 

[kosborn1]

Hi there! I had the exact same issue with one of my easter eggers! After about 14 hours of having her, she was laying flat on her stomach looking pretty dead, not eating or drinking. No pasty butt, brooder was the right temp, she was the only one who was struggling!

This might sound a little crazy, but I actually hand fed/watered her every hour throughout the day when I could (got them on a weekend) and checked on her a few times during the night. Three weeks later, she is still clucking along! She's considerably smaller than the others, but she's just fine!

Here's a breakdown of my "treatment" based on suggestions from this forum and a few other sites:

-Just for reference, I started by just hand feeding her water with sugar because she was so incredibly weak. I then moved to a bit of raw egg, and then to the mash!

-hand fed her a "mash" of: chick feed, water, and a teeny bit of sugar, all mircrowaved to be warm. this worked very well, especially when the others got interested! She seemed to be more motivated to eat when others wanted it!

-liquid baby vitamins; I couldn't figure out how to get her to take them off my finger because she did NOT like the taste or something. My solution was to add them to the water for everyone in the hopes that she would get some!

-pedialyte! I put some on my finger and put it up to her beak. She tolerated this well and this usually gave her enough energy to eat the mash I made.

Many people told me that it was "failure to thrive" and that she wouldn't make it. I think that if you are diligent, you can turn things around!