• giveaway ENDS SOON! Cutest Baby Fowl Photo Contest: Win a Brinsea Maxi 24 EX Connect CLICK HERE!

Absorption taking too long?

Pics
Date sort Score sort
Idk how I didn't catch that you had broodies again or that you were going to hatch eggs🤷 but woohoo! What kind of babes are they? I think you're doing a great job and can't wait to see the barnie mom with chicks again. Who's else is broody?
 
Success!!! The mama has adopted them! Everybody was alive and well in the morning, both chicks are happily scurrying around exploring their new apartment, eating from the feeder, and tucking under mom to warm up. She feeds them, talks to them and makes room for them to squeeze underneath her when they start nuzzling. I'm so happy she's here for me, and able to do this, because I don't think they would've fit with the original bunch, who are running around being big kids right now, while these guys still want to sleep a lot of the time.

Look at this cuteness! The chick that comes up to eat first is the assisted one who was half dead just a couple of days ago:


I'm going to put some shelf liner on that bucket lid so the chicks don't slip around. I like to put something under the feeder, because the moms always take food out and put it on the ground to feed the chicks, and I don't want it to get lost among the shavings.
 
Auntiejessi3 said:
Idk how I didn't catch that you had broodies again or that you were going to hatch eggs🤷 but woohoo! What kind of babes are they? I think you're doing a great job and can't wait to see the barnie mom with chicks again. Who's else is broody?
Click to expand...
Thanks! I decided to hatch a small number of chicks every year, for meat :oops: and use a broody to cut down on the amount of work for me :D This year we want to keep 1 or 2, so I went with my favorite breed in the whole world - English Orpington. I wanted to avoid shipped eggs though, and had a really hard time finding any within driving distance of me. I only found one breeder, who only had one color available at the time - Lavender. So that's what these babies are. She seems very professional and her birds are high quality, full and fluffy like they're supposed to be, not like the raggedy hatchery stock you get with Orps, especially Lavender. So I'm looking forward to seeing these fluffs grow up!

The Barnie did great last year, but this year I wanted to give somebody else a chance to be a mom. That ended up being a mistake I now regret... The hen I was hoping for - the large, pillowy, sweet Silver Laced Orp - did go broody for me (yay!) but she's missing a lot of the instincts and has been making mistakes left and right, some of which cost her a bunch of eggs and babies :( This will definitely be her last time. I'm done with the experiments, I'll just use the Barnie going forward. She's solid. This is her second time going broody this spring, and the second time I kept her as a backup. I'm glad I did! Now these weaker babies can have their own mom - an experienced one who'll take good care of them. Everything worked out great, and now I have two moms with babies - extra fun!

 
K0k0shka said:
Definitely. Both of my broodies were hand raised in the house and are bonded to me, and let me pick up and snuggle the chicks. I'm still working from home, so I'm out there for frequent visits throughout the day :love
Click to expand...
This sounds like a perfect arrangement! I'm very jealous, no chicks to snuggle here!! 😂
 
Update: the chick is over a month old at this point and doing well! I'm going to keep updating this thread, in case it can help somebody else with another data point of whether assisted chicks make it to adulthood, and whether they develop any other problems. This is my 4th assisted chick. The other 3 (from last year) all developed other problems and none of them made it past 1 year old. Which has been greatly discouraging, and I wasn't going to do any more assists, but... here we are again. So I want to see what happens with this one. It better be a girl, for the experiment to work, because if it's a boy it will need to meet its end pretty young, as I can't have roosters where I live.

So, at 1+ month old, it's doing very well. It's still smaller than the rest, and not feathering out at the same pace (it has lots of bare skin, where the others replace the fluff with feathers a lot more seamlessly). But it's eating and drinking and pooping and running around climbing things, acting normal. It's not even the shiest of the bunch. I have a suspicion that it's a boy, but we'll see.

1656687214402.png


1656687236886.png



Naked butt! It dropped its fluff way before replacing it with feathers, and has had a naked butt for a long time. But the feathers are slowly coming in.
1656687268497.png
 
K0k0shka said:
12 hours after I chipped the shell, and about 40 hours after external pip, the chick was still alive but not making any progress at all, so I decided to pull it out. The membrane started bleeding a little again, but also, parts of it were getting papery and stuck to the chick, so it was a balance between letting it stay and absorb, and risking it getting glued in place. 40 hours though!!! Why would it not be done absorbing the blood yet?? As I started peeling the shell back, the chick started chirping and moving a lot, but even after half of the shell was gone, it still couldn't unfold itself without help. It seemed very weak. It wasn't malpositioned, the beak was in the right place. There was no yolk left, thank goodness, but still some fresh veins with blood in them. I pulled the whole chick out, but left the umbilical cord attached, and put the chick back in the incubator with the shell and the remaining veins that are still attached to it, so it would hopefully finish up and not bleed out. It's breathing and moving its mouth, but not trying to sit up or anything like newly hatched chicks usually do. My experience with assisted chicks has been very disappointing - my 3 assisted chicks from last year have all died within their first year - but those eggs were shipped, so I figured they must have had issues. This one was not. Plus, its mama messed up, so I guess I was just trying to make up for that, and give it a chance in case it was otherwise a healthy chick with just some bad luck. Most of the chicks from this batch were meant to be eaten anyway, so I'll just mark this one and add it to the meat group, and I'll keep a couple from the ones that hatched normally.

What do you guys think about this case though? Why is it taking so long to absorb?

View attachment 3121583
View attachment 3121582
View attachment 3121586
Click to expand...
In the second picture, it looks as if you disconnected the umbilical cord which will bleed a lot! You probably should check and see if it has stopped bleeding or if it is still bleeding. This will also cause all of the blood around the chick.
 
Kenzie22 said:
In the second picture, it looks as if you disconnected the umbilical cord which will bleed a lot! You probably should check and see if it has stopped bleeding or if it is still bleeding. This will also cause all of the blood around the chick.
Click to expand...
You should probably read the last comment on the thread before commenting. This chick is 1 month old now and doing just fine.
 

Similar threads

B
Input on when to intervene?
Replies
8
Views
955
BirchAndBeaks
B
Immensely_Confused
Assist or wait?
Replies
2
Views
646
Immensely_Confused
Immensely_Confused
Old_McDonalds_Farm
    • Like
Thoughts on failed hatches?
Replies
7
Views
894
Slothinc
Slothinc
K
Emergency! Should I assist or leave alone?
Replies
1
Views
200
NatJ
NatJ
H
    • Like
    • Sad
Exposed bone in hatching chick?!
Replies
4
Views
230
LaFleche
LaFleche

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom