Cause of chick death? - Heartbroken

[azygous]

That's too bad, but I'm glad it wasn't a broody. Some chicks hatch without functioning digestive systems. They don't usually live long. They are the sick ones right from the start. I had a couple myself over the years. It's sad when they don't make it, even though there's not much you can do for them.

 

[MINDANAO DAVE]

I think t

Wednesday night we had our first chick hatch and by yesterday morning we had 10. In past year's we've put them in the basement or the garage, but they end up making such a huge mess, we didn't want to do that again this year. So we put the 8x4 (x2' high) brooder in the (unheated, uninsulated, but draft free) chicken coop with a Sweeter Heater (11"x40") and chicken wire lid. We put the food and water pretty close to the heater, so that they wouldn't have to go too far away from the heat to eat or drink. The heater was lowered so that when the chicks were standing, it just about touched their backs. If I held my hand under the heater, it did get hot. I kept checking on them throughout the day yesterday and while they didn't seem to stray too far from the heater, they were never shivering. It did get pretty cold last night (in the teens) but it was my understanding that the infrared Sweeter Heaters didn't need a minimum ambient temp to work and that it would keep the chicks warm enough if they were under it.

Well, this morning 8 of the 10 chicks were dead. They were in various places around the brooder, not all of them under the heater. I am heartbroken. We have 42 eggs in the incubator now (day 6) and would like to figure out why these chicks died before the next ones hatch. Any ideas? Could they have gotten too hot because they wouldn't leave the heater? Do these heaters not work if it gets too cold? Were these chicks just weaker because we collected the eggs in the middle of winter? (I should note that we only had 10 out of 36 hatch, with one more still in the incubator trying to hatch but it's not looking good. Last year we had a 70%+ hatch rate).

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!

is a great site. I think the easiest thing to do is just get a thermometer put one under your heater and another on the opposite side of the brooder. Then you know exactly how have.

 

[MINDANAO DAVE]

I think t
is a great site. I think the easiest thing to do is just get a thermometer put one under your heater and another on the opposite side of the brooder. Then you know exactly how have.

What you have.

 

[Englishable]

We've got more chicks!

We put 42 more eggs in the incubator late on the 19th, (removed 4 after candling) and we expected them to hatch late last night or early this morning. Friday morning we had one chick already! Saturday evening we removed her and put her in our tub with a heat lamp while DH worked on our Mama Heating Pads. Yesterday we scooped out the four additional chicks that had hatched and put them there too.

We now have 14 more chicks hatched and most of the remaining eggs have pipped! A much better hatch rate than our first batch.

I'll post a pic tomorrow of our MHP setup and see what everyone thinks. We put a temp sensor under it, and it read ~50 degrees; I then propped it up so it was actually touching the heating pad and it read 95. I think we might test it out in the house and observe the chicks' behavior before we move them out to the coop - I do NOT want to lose these guys too!!

We have another set of 42 in our other incubator, which we candled last week and removed 4 again; those should hatch in a week!

 

[aart]

Congrats on your hatch!

We put a temp sensor under it, and it read ~50 degrees; I then propped it up so it was actually touching the heating pad and it read 95.

That should be fine.
Remember you can't measure the heat from a pad like you do with a heat lamp.....surface of pad should be about 100-120°F, an infrared temp gauge works best.

 

[Jammy Dodger]

Congrats on the new little ones ! Was going to try a Mama heating pad cave but was nervous that we couldn't see the babies that good when they were in it and thought about them piling up and sufocating . Ended up using a black ceramic infrared heat emitter 150 watts suspended with great results.