Baby chick with an empty crop?

[Camry08]

Hello, I’m a first time chicken owner and I recently got nine chicks from tractor supply. Three of the chicks I got were silkies and one of them I found to be very sleepy. While the others ate, drank, and ran around he was always asleep. Falling asleep while standing or falling onto his back and not getting up.

I’ve had him for three days now and I haven’t seen him eat drink or poop on his own once. After doing some research I learned about cocci and I ran to my local tractor supply and picked up some Corid.

I have been routinely feeding him the medicated water as well as an egg yolk concoction in needleless syringes. The egg yolk concoction seems to have helped perk him up a bit.

Now my concern is that I can’t feel his crop with all the other ones I can feel it very obviously but it’s completely flat? And when he’s not sleeping he gets obsessed with cleaning his chest. Any ideas on how I can help him or what this means?

 

[Lady of McCamley]

It's not coccidiosis. That takes time to develop in a chick....minimum 3 weeks with a strong strain, more likely 4 to 9 weeks.

So this is failure to thrive. It could be from a latent bacterial infection left over from hatching. Your chick would need to be antibiotics. Or it could simply be poor constitution form birth, something inside wrong from heart to kidneys to digestive system.

The crop is empty because the chick isn't eating anything that stays in the crop long.

If it were me, I'd take it back to TSC and ask for an exchange. You may never get this little guy right.

LofMc