8 Week old deformed chick ?

stormylady

Songster
11 Years
Dec 27, 2008
2,657
20
191
Illinois
Hi Everyone, Hope you can help me. I have an 8 week old EE chick, Sweetpea, and she has an overbite very badly and she cannot eat dry chickstarter, so on the advice of a fellow BYC'er I m giving her a special Diet and though she is growing she is very slow, she is just a little larger than my 2 1/2 week old Salmon Fav. chicks, However she is a very strong chick and seems healthy otherwise, but the deal is this, I've been keeping her with her original brooder mates and taking her out and feeding her seperately,(I tryed to put her in with the Salmon Fav. babies but she would have none of it she screamed and cryed all the time and refused to eat ,and then when I put her back in with her buddies she was fine) which was fine and she was doing well, But her broodermates are 3 to 4 times larger than her and they went out to the coop yesterday morning, She is wayyyyy to small to go with them so I put her in with the Salmon Fav babies and all day yesterday she cryed and was flying and hopping up to the screen covering it all night and all day and again refused to eat, a few mins ago I took her out and she flew to her dinner table (my comp. Desk ) and was eating like she was starving to death. I held her and she went to sleep. I feel so quilty but not sure what to do for her.
I Guess my Questions are these.
1. Will she get used to being with the other chicks.
2. will she eat given enough time without being hand fed and in the brooder? Or will she starve herself to death. I heard stress can kill birds easily and that scares me.
3 Will she ever be able to go out to the coop and live with the other chicks with her disabilities?

Im beginning to think I didn't help her by helping her and it makes me very sad. She loves people and wants to be held all the time, doesn't really matter who holds her she just thinks everyone should hold her!
Oh and i did clip her beak back to the bloodline and it helped her some but still is too long on the top to pick up the tiny chick starter. Thanks for all the advice you can give, Sandy
 
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I'm sorry I have no idea how to help you with your sweet chickie, but wanted to say I hope that it all works out for her! She sounds like a pretty special babie and these
hugs.gif
are for her! All the best of luck! Hang in there I'm sure someone will have some advice for you soon!
 
Sounds like your little cross beak there is hanging on, but at such a slow growth rate, she is likly not getting enough to eat in the long run. Make sure feed dishes are deep so she can throw food into her face basically. If she has still held her own against the rest, she can go out with the rest too, even if she is smaller than they are. That said, it will be your judgment call on wither or not helping her was the best thing to do in terms of quality of life.
 
Thankyou both, she is such a special little one, She is odd looking, she has very short legs, a large body for her legs and a small little head with a large beak on the top and a very short bottom beak and large eyes for her little head and she has something like a flap of skin under her chin Im not sure how to explain it almost like a chin? I will post pictures of her in the morning so you can see her and what Im trying to explain if you would care to look, Oh and her wings are longer than her body. Im thinking and Im not even sure chickens can have it , but maybe a form of Dwarfism maybe. She does eat the food good, it is chickstarter mixed with water, scrambled egg and yogurt and vitamin E capsule broke open and mixed in for her nervous system. I make sure her little crop is full everytime I feed her and she can put away quite abit of food, It does take a very long time for her to eat her food for obvious reasons, Her stools are normal looking and white capped like the other chicks.So Im assuming she is digesting the food ok, It seems like she is putting on some weight but she isn't really growing right, she is still thin though under her mounds of feathers and she does have alot of feathers all over her body except her head hasn't feathered out yet it is still covered in fuzz. The part that worries me about putting her in the coop with the others is that her group never picked on her but I have several different ages out there right now going from 19 weeks down to her group of 8 weeks and some of the bigger chicks tend to chase some of the younger ones around, so far no really serious aggression problems but the little ones are pretty fast and tend to get out of the bigger chicks way, she is not that fast and I think they would pick on her.
Do you think maybe a good option would be to bring one of her little buddies back in to be with her? I have a 11 week old Salmon faverole that appears to be the lowest ranking girl out there and was raised with her group.
And your right silkiechicken, at the end of the day I do need to decide if I did the right thing by her, but really in the beginning I thought that she was just the underdog and wasn't getting enough food, but then I noticed the beak and thought that was her problem, but now Im thinking it is a much more serious problem. But I helped her to survive and I guess i will help her for the rest of her life if needed. Right or Wrong I don't know. Just something I will have to deal with. Thankyou Sandy.
 

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