Hi, I'm Molly, totally new to chicken husbandry. Here's my tldr; intro to this forum: I have some acreage in New York and am making a closed loop growing system on my land. Chickens seem like the best way to get hot compostable manure on site, so I ordered 8 buff orps from McMurray back in Nov for April delivery. My chicken coop/run will easily take 20 chickens so that's where I'm heading, but I decided to start small and add over time as my skills improve.
McMurray took the chicks to the post office at 4:45 on Weds last week so they sat overnight there. Long story short, it took them 69 hours of travel to get to me on Sat, and when I got them the box was beat to shit with 9 dead/dying chicks in it. One dead and 6 so weak they were almost dead. 2 looked like they might make it. I hand fed them all (yolk, molasses, electrolyte slurry) with a syringe but they all gave up and died but one. She is in my laundry room in a tote bin with a heat lamp at one end and a brooder plate at the other. The first day she was alone, she was screaming hysterically all day so I spent time with her on my chest on a heat pad, enclosed in my hands (trying to recreate a hen experience) and she calmed down and slept like a rock.
She has had a lot of pasty butt but we've dealt with it. Yesterday she had no visible pasty butt but wasn't pooping at all and looked like she was really straining to go but couldn't. She hadn't pooped all day and was bent over in the poopy position and I could see her straining to go and gradually weakening, so I stroked her abdomen gently with my finger from underneath her for a while hoping to trigger some successful paristalsis (and even if not it just seemed to feel really good to her) and after a while poop came out!
Now she is eating well (Grubbly chick crumbles softened with her drinking water) and drinking (water with electrolytes and a tiny amount of plain yogurt and molasses), and she's starting to make what looks like normal bird poop. She isn't distress calling but mostly just chattering. Still don't know if she will make it.
I have reserved 6 more chicks from Agway for Friday. I have so many questions:
1) Will it be OK to put chicks in with her that are a week younger?
2) Is it to be expected that chicks from the feed store or the mail are always going to have potentially lethal digestive system issues? Are they ever just healthy?
3) Apart from correct temperature, what else can I do to bring their stress level down when they arrive?
4) Is this slurry of yolk, electrolyte water and molasses the correct rescue formula or is there something better?
Thank you for any guidance, and very nice to meet you all! I'm going to read everything about this I can find on this form now...
McMurray took the chicks to the post office at 4:45 on Weds last week so they sat overnight there. Long story short, it took them 69 hours of travel to get to me on Sat, and when I got them the box was beat to shit with 9 dead/dying chicks in it. One dead and 6 so weak they were almost dead. 2 looked like they might make it. I hand fed them all (yolk, molasses, electrolyte slurry) with a syringe but they all gave up and died but one. She is in my laundry room in a tote bin with a heat lamp at one end and a brooder plate at the other. The first day she was alone, she was screaming hysterically all day so I spent time with her on my chest on a heat pad, enclosed in my hands (trying to recreate a hen experience) and she calmed down and slept like a rock.
She has had a lot of pasty butt but we've dealt with it. Yesterday she had no visible pasty butt but wasn't pooping at all and looked like she was really straining to go but couldn't. She hadn't pooped all day and was bent over in the poopy position and I could see her straining to go and gradually weakening, so I stroked her abdomen gently with my finger from underneath her for a while hoping to trigger some successful paristalsis (and even if not it just seemed to feel really good to her) and after a while poop came out!
Now she is eating well (Grubbly chick crumbles softened with her drinking water) and drinking (water with electrolytes and a tiny amount of plain yogurt and molasses), and she's starting to make what looks like normal bird poop. She isn't distress calling but mostly just chattering. Still don't know if she will make it.
I have reserved 6 more chicks from Agway for Friday. I have so many questions:
1) Will it be OK to put chicks in with her that are a week younger?
2) Is it to be expected that chicks from the feed store or the mail are always going to have potentially lethal digestive system issues? Are they ever just healthy?
3) Apart from correct temperature, what else can I do to bring their stress level down when they arrive?
4) Is this slurry of yolk, electrolyte water and molasses the correct rescue formula or is there something better?
Thank you for any guidance, and very nice to meet you all! I'm going to read everything about this I can find on this form now...
Good luck with your one chick! 
