- Sep 8, 2010
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Hi! I'm brand new and this is my first question to the forum. We adopted 4 chicks from my son's school so I'm not 100% of what they all are and we aren't pros at this chicken stuff, but I've browsed this site quite a bit and have the book Raising Chickens for Dummies, so I think I'm off to a decent start. We believe the one I'm writing about is a Delaware. She's white with some gray....They were hatched late May and are in an outdoor coop now, all seeming to do very well. They are allowed to free range except not as much now that they were attacked. Luckily my husband was home and scared off the predator. Chicks were missing for a while but he found them all and brought them back to the coop. He's been busy making them a pen now and we'll probably only let them roam when we know we'll be home. Anyway, this white one we call Daisy seems to walk like she's drunk sometimes. It looks like she trips over her feet sometimes. She loses her balance and falls over. She seems to always bend down when they're eating where the others don't do that. She can run and keep up with the other three ok. She's eating fine and is our more aggressive of the four always wanting to be first to the treat that was thrown out, etc. Sometimes she'll lay on her side and the others walk on her and she squirms to get up. We're just worried about her. Last night she fell off the roosting boxes. She doesn't perch like the others do. She likes to be on a flat surface up high at night. (It probably didn't help that I cleaned the coop and moved the boxes away from the wall to get all the poop left behind and never moved them back. OOPS! - I felt really bad. My husband was working on the pen and heard her fall and went into pick her up)
Other things I notice is that the other three have shiny feathers and all seem very healthy. Daisy doesn't seem to have that shine. She gets separated from the others a lot and we can hear her calling out to them. Everything else seems to be normal compared to the others.
I've read others posts related to what seems to be similar ailments and I thought some referred to vitamins and extra protein. Can I get this at my local hardware store where we buy their food and shavings? Should I go back to giving her the mash we gave as small chicks? They are our pets, but we aren't planning on vet visits or incurring a lot of expense here. I'd like to just take the simple measures of keeping them healthy and happy.
We'd like to see her get better.
Thanks for any advice!!
Other things I notice is that the other three have shiny feathers and all seem very healthy. Daisy doesn't seem to have that shine. She gets separated from the others a lot and we can hear her calling out to them. Everything else seems to be normal compared to the others.
I've read others posts related to what seems to be similar ailments and I thought some referred to vitamins and extra protein. Can I get this at my local hardware store where we buy their food and shavings? Should I go back to giving her the mash we gave as small chicks? They are our pets, but we aren't planning on vet visits or incurring a lot of expense here. I'd like to just take the simple measures of keeping them healthy and happy.
We'd like to see her get better.
Thanks for any advice!!
