Chick can't stand upright for very long

[MDchickenRaiser]

Hi, my family recently started to raise some chickens. We bought the chickens at at TSC store in Virginia, and all seem very healthy after the 1st week, with some beginning to develop tail feathers.

However, my family and I noticed that one of the chicks is eating an ENORMOUS amount, and all she does is eat and sleep. This has been going on for some time, and now that chick is significantly larger than the others.

The problem is that this chick has gotten to a point where not only does it just eat and sleep, it even has a harder time standing up and walking about. When it eats, it always prefers to sit down and eat. The chick also has trouble keeping balance, tends to fall backwards, and resorts back to just sitting around. It even gets to the point where it just drags itself around on its feet rather than walk at times, and never bothers to roost on the bars like any of the others. It also sort of waddles when it walks.

When looking at its feet, there doesn't seem to be any discoloration. The feet, just like the rest of the chick, are much larger than those of any other chicks in the brooder.

Does anyone know what's up with this chick, and if there's any way to make be less...lazy?

 

[foreverlearning]

TSC is very well known for mixing up the chicks in the store. It sounds like you got a broiler chick of some sort (cornish cross, black broiler, or red broiler). If that is the case they require special care to avoid what you are dealing with and even with that care are supposed to be culled for meat in 6-8 weeks. It takes a lot of work to get them to a healthy egg laying age. Some of the care things are restricted feed and movement. Free ranging does great to make them healthy as possible. For now you can put it in a pen and put the feed on the other side of the pen. After it has some feed move it so the chick has to move around to get to it.