chick got sick !

[skuirrelly]

I got 6 chicks from TSC about a month ago, so they are about 5-6 weeks old. one of them stayed small- she was about 1/2 the size of the other 5. was almost feathered ( she was slower at this as well). We were concerned, so we asked a friend who has had chickens for years and he said it may be that she is either a runt or just a different breed. few days later I noticed that her legs and feet were white where as the others were yellow. I noticed this about a week ago. two days ago I came home from work and she could hardly walk, kept listing to one side then would lay down, she had one leg stuck out to the side( it was not broken). she progressively got worse, I came out here for advice but did not find anythign that helped, I tried to give her water and food but she was not having it. Last night she was so bad, just laying in an awkward postition not moving except for her legs once in awhile. that we could not make her suffer anymore.

does anyone have any idea of what was wrong with her?

 

[meriruka]

Can't really tell you what happened, but I can say that some breeds do have white legs (buff orps for one).
Chicks only take 21 days to develop and hatch as a fully functional bird. A lot can go wrong. The problem could be internal, maybe something inside did not grow correctly. Sorry about her. I hope the others do well.

 

[skuirrelly]

thanks. I felt really bad and I wondered if there was something I did wrong that I could correct so it wont happen again. or something I could do next time to save the little one. The other chicks seem to be just fine, they seem to grow lots everyday.