Bloody, rough navel

[CSisley]

I had two chicks hatch early, early this morning; they were due today. They both appear to be doing just fine, not lethargic or anything but one has a bit of a bloody rough spot where his navel should be. It is about 3/16" wide and sticks out about an 1/8." It appears to be sort of a rough, fleshy, red and has bled enough to leave a very small spot or two in the incubator but not enough to make me concerned about blood loss. It had one small dryish vein sticking off of the fleshy spot that I snipped off at the base so it couldn't be pecked off. I also dabbed the spot with some antibiotic ointment to help prevent infection. I thought about using something that would dry the spot but I thought that if the rough spot needed to suck itself into the chick it wouldn't be very good to dry it out. I will separate the chick if I think the other one will peck at the sore spot but so far they seem to be doing a good job keeping each other happy. There are two other chicks due to hatch today so I'll be curious to see how their bottoms look... The other chick has what I would consider to be a perfect navel with no red and it hatched at least 3 hours before the red butt one did.

Anyone have experience with this kind of navel or have any resulting problems because of it?

 

[CSisley]

I didn't get any replies but I thought I'd give an update in case someone has the same problem. The chick's navel looks much better today. It has shrunk significantly in size, it is dry and is no longer red but has darkened into a scab color. The other two chicks that were due to hatch yesterday hatched and both of their navels are what I would consider perfect so I guess it was just a unique problem with that chick.

 

[Arielle]

I'm suspecting that the navel didn't finish it process before the chick hatched. It's all about timing. Glad all is well.