3 week old chicks breathing with beaks open

[MamaL]

I have 2 chicks out of 24 that seems to be breathing/panting out of their beaks when settling down. They are eating fine and drink fine. Their energy levels seems to be ok and there is no sign of sickness. Should I be worried? Their water as ACV in it and Grapefruit Seed Extract in it. I chance their bedding every two days and they get fresh water multiple times a day and fresh food every day. I've read some other stuff about chicks breathing out if their beaks is a sign of an emergency but I have no idea what to do if it is an emergency. Can someone please help me? Just so you know they are Buff Orpingtons.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

What kind of heat source are you using and what is the temperature? Do they have room to get away from the light?

I am thinking they are too hot and if you are seeing panting they could easily die from overheating.

 

[MamaL]

We have a heat lamp over them It's above their box but it shines throughout the whole box, so no they don't have a place to escape. I can readjust the light if the will help. Do I need to keep it on all the time. They are in my living room and the past few nights haven't been all that cold. Could I turn the light off for to it to see how they do?

 

[chickenlver2013]

We have a heat lamp over them It's above their box but it shines throughout the whole box, so no they don't have a place to escape. I can readjust the light if the will help. Do I need to keep it on all the time. They are in my living room and the past few nights haven't been all that cold. Could I turn the light off for to it to see how they do?

they're hot. If you don't move the lamp away from the box they'll die

 

[chickenlver2013]

We have a heat lamp over them It's above their box but it shines throughout the whole box, so no they don't have a place to escape. I can readjust the light if the will help. Do I need to keep it on all the time. They are in my living room and the past few nights haven't been all that cold. Could I turn the light off for to it to see how they do?

also I would turn the light off to see how they do

 

[MamaL]

It must be hotter in the box the I thought, I just checked and can see condensation in the jar attached to their watere.

 

[Demosthine]

As heat is always a concern with open panting like that, I am curious for the answers to ChickensAreSweet's questions, too. How old are they?

But also, where did you get your chicks from? If you got them from a feed store, where do they get their supply? We have had recent and significant problems with chicks from Ideal. In one batch, only 3 of 25 Barred Hollands survived more than a few days. A second batch of Speckled Sussex, we are down to 8 out of 27. We haven't able to track anything down for answers, but your symptoms sound like several of our loses. Others just seemingly dropped dead for no reason.

In our case, we believe it was a respiratory illness from the hatchery. Duramycin-10 seemed to have no effect. We used Tylan and it seemed to help. That is more expensive and online only, from what I was told, but it seemed to work.

 

[MamaL]

I raised the lamp way high and moved it. So that it doesn't shine over the entire box. They moved around a bit and settled back down. I also turn the ceiling fan in the living room on low.

 

[MamaL]

We got our chicks from a local feed store. I don't know where they got them from, they were about three days old when we got them. They are about three weeks old.

 

[MamaL]

This is how high it is now