chick having hard time keeping balance and is tired

TheAFrameFarmstead

In the Brooder
Jun 9, 2020
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I have a cream legbar chick who is the smallest weve gotten from a hatchery about 3 days ago its probably 4 days old. Today I cleaned out the brooder with the chicks in it and it got trampled on and it was lying on the ground kinda on its side, i thought it died but i picked it up and it was okay. Now splayed legs. It has a hard time keeping its balance and it falls asleep in my hand, its very sweet but im afraid it may be just weak. I gave it a scrambled egg, put it in a box with another chick so its not around 15 other chicks that are a little older and same age. I have 16 chicks all together. It ate a lot of the scrambled egg and i also dipped its beak in water with save a chick electrolyte and probiotic and that is freely available in its box. its now sleeping under an ecoglow. should i be worried and is there more that i can do? I'm planning on feeding it the remainder of the egg through out the day. It ate a lot of the egg, maybe 1/4th of a whole scrambled egg and it perked up a little but then fell asleep. Please let me know.
 
Do you have Poultry Nutri-drench? Your chick may be borderline failure-to-thrive. The Nutri-drench can give such a chick an important boost.

Another way to boost a weak chick is to give warm sugar water. I combine the Nutri-drench with the sugar water. There are lots of videos and threads telling how to treat splayed legs. It's simple, and the results occur quickly.
 
Do you have Poultry Nutri-drench? Your chick may be borderline failure-to-thrive. The Nutri-drench can give such a chick an important boost.

Another way to boost a weak chick is to give warm sugar water. I combine the Nutri-drench with the sugar water. There are lots of videos and threads telling how to treat splayed legs. It's simple, and the results occur quickly.
I'm going to order nutri drench now. Do I dip the beak into the nutridrench sugar water or should I somehow get a dropper and give it to the chick?
 
You can ask for and get a free narrow oral syringe from most any pharmacy. I load the syringe with the warm sugar water with a few drops of Nutri-drench and slip it into the right side of the chick's beak where the espophagus is, and squirt it a drop at a time, closing the chick's beak to swallow. This avoids the center of the throat where the trachea is.

Here's what it looks like in there.
upload_2019-3-15_10-22-30.jpeg
 
I got the nutridrench mixed it with sugar water and put it in the chicks water. The chick is still very small, I tried opening its mouth and putting it in but it's just so small ,like the body of a 2 day old chicks and I was afraid I'd by accidently pour it in its nose and lungs. It got a very very small amount in its mouth directly.
It still drinks water and after I came back from tractor supply with the nutridrench it was up and eating. I'm hoping the nutridrenched water and sugar will help it.

How long do you think I should keep it seperated from the gang? (it's with 2 friends that are needy and as small as it) again , I have 16 all together ranging from 4 days old and 10ish days old.
 
You can dip the beak into the electrolyte water for a half second and release it letting it swallow, and repeat a few times every 10 minutes to try and get plenty of fluids into it. The NutriDrench works quickly if you can put a drop or two into the beak undiluted.
 
Okay, I somehow got the nutri drench in it's mouth and maybe gave it 1 ml. The poor thing has no energy to stand at all. I think it's dying. It had poop on its wig embedded so I gave it a warm bath and then blew it dry but it literally would cry and then fall asleep on its back. I also saw some feathers missing near the neck that my fiancee said may be a tumor. Poor thing. I have no idea what to do but to just keep it comfortable. I have it in a brooder with all the small chicks now does anyone know if I should completely separate it? I attached some really sad photos.
 

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Once a chick is out of its shell, the world is a harsh place for any chick not equipped with functioning organs. If internal organs are underdeveloped, it would have a difficult time breathing in adequate oxygen, efficiently processing calories into body heat and nutrients, and it may not even have adequate pooping function.

These failure to thrive chicks break out hearts, but there's not much we can do when they have so little to work with. I've had a few of these myself. It's never easy when we fail to fix them.
 

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