Baby chick emergency

[cundare]

Bonding with a sibling will make the mother more likely to accept the new baby? Or would it be just as likely that she'll reject them both when reintroduced? That would result in a real problem, having to hand-raise TWO of these little guys.

 

[cundare]

We tried last night and to our surprise, the hen didn't seem to mind having another baby under her. But the baby wasn't having it. It's probably already imprinted on us and when we walked away, it started chirping in distress and ran after us. It wasn't having any part of the hen. We'll try again tonight. Maybe there will be some incremental progress, and maybe the mama bird will continue to show patience. In the interim, the poor thing is lonely and crying constantly when we're not holding it. It's in a box where there's food and water and a heating pad, but it wants to start exploring and this morning figured out a way to get over the wall of the box. Not a good thing, since we also have a little rescue cat in the house that seems quite interested in this noisy little puffball.

 

[cundare]

We tried last night and to our surprise, the hen didn't seem to mind having another baby under her. But the baby wasn't having it. It's probably already imprinted on us and when we walked away, it started chirping in distress and ran after us. It wasn't having any part of the hen. We'll try again tonight. Maybe there will be some incremental progress, and maybe the mama bird will continue to show patience. In the interim, the poor thing is lonely and crying constantly when we're not holding it. It's in a box where there's food and water and a heating pad, but it wants to start exploring and this morning figured out a way to get over the wall of the box. Not a good thing, since we also have a little rescue cat in the house that seems quite interested in this noisy little puffball.

We made the mistake once before of keeping a rescue chick in the house too long. When we tried to re-introduce her to the flock, she was terrified and, sensing that, they all attacked her. We've tried repeatedly to get her back outside, but psychologically, it looks like she'll neverr be able to fit into chicken society. So now she's an indoor bird, something that I feel is a bad idea. But I don't know what else we can do other than continue to keep trying to acclimate her to the other birds (which has not worked in the slightest so far). I don't want to make the same mistake with this new chick, but this is like a train wreck in slow motion. I don't see an optimal outcome -- which IMHO would be giving the chick a normal life with all our other birds.

 

[LaFleche]

Just like I said earlier: add another chick for company. It will train your orphan and get it used to chicken company.
It is easier to raise two together than just one.

We made the mistake once before of keeping a rescue chick in the house too long. When we tried to re-introduce her to the flock, she was terrified and, sensing that, they all attacked her. We've tried repeatedly to get her back outside, but psychologically, it looks like she'll neverr be able to fit into chicken society. So now she's an indoor bird, something that I feel is a bad idea. But I don't know what else we can do other than continue to keep trying to acclimate her to the other birds (which has not worked in the slightest so far). I don't want to make the same mistake with this new chick, but this is like a train wreck in slow motion. I don't see an optimal outcome -- which IMHO would be giving the chick a normal life with all our other birds.

 

[cundare]

I understand, @Project Blue, and we did try. But it was really hard to grab one of the little guys free-ranging. I'm trying to convince my husband to go that route, but he deosn't want to traumatize a second bird. The little guy inside is eating & drinking on his own & now a week old, is actually trying to jump out of his box. I fear that we may be taking too long to resolve what would have initially been a solvable problem. The fact that mama hen seems eager to adopt the baby (it is hers, really) was what I would have expected to have been the biggest obstacle.

 

[LaFleche]

it was really hard to grab one of the little guys free-ranging

This is done by night from underneath the hen when all is quiet and the chicks an momma hen are fast asleep. Chasing after them during the day is not necessary.

 

[cundare]

It's a bit more complicated. The hen sleeps in a secuded corner of the yard where it's almost impossible to reach the spot without a rake (which I use to collect eggs). So I never had the opportunity to try to capture a chick sleeping underneath her at night. We have to work with what we have.

Right now, we've got a two-week old baby bird that has grown attached to both of us. It follows us everywhere, jumps on our heads, etc. We take it outside every day, where it follows so closely behind us that it's hard not to step on it. If we stand by to guard, it forages, but runs from other birds and never strays more than 5 or 10 feet from my feet.

We have a warm, padded box for it to sleep in indoors, but if we put it in the box during the day, it chirps incessantly for hours. At night, it takes a lot of effort to get it to calm down to go to sleep. It normally follows us around the house during the day -- not a good situation, constantly cleaning up tiny poops -- but we can't let it roam free when we're not around because of other curious pets, including a rescue cat.

So we've got a problem, a long-term problem. I'm not sure how we'll be able to convince this little guy to move outside when he gets big enough. He won't have the advantage of siblings that he's bonded with and will have to find a place to sleep on his own. He'll also be prey to all the larger birds, some of which are aggressive.

We try every day to convince him to adopt one of two hens that seem to like the idea. But he won't go near them, even when their own babies approach him.

I've mentioned a lot of this before, but we haven't come up with any ideas that seem to have potential. We want to avoid having a full-grown chicken roaming around the house in a few months. But we also want to give the little guy as much of a chance as we can of having a natural life in chicken society. But we're running out of ideas.

I wish we could have acted on your advice from the get-go. But as I mentioned, it simply wasn't possible to get more than halfway, and that wasn't enough.