Chick in egg - trying to decide cull or not

[DonyaQuick]

A broody of mine is hatching eggs right now. One of them she kept kind of pushing to the edge the last couple days so I think she knew something was wrong, although she didn’t outrightly discard it. When everyone else was pipped and starting to zip and making noise, the one egg was quiet. I candled it and the air cell was HUGE, about half the egg, and the egg was already on the smaller side. The air cell area is really a lot bigger than it looks in the photo below. I saw no movement at the time and assumed it was probably dead, but opened the air cell end just in case it was purely bad shrinkwrap, which I have dealt with before. It was just clinging on but pretty unresponsive and still very veiny so I moistened the membrane and moved it to my incubator to let it either pass (what I expected) or make it out quietly, since I didn’t think there was much I could do. It’s still breathing this morning though. The reason I’m posting in emergencies is I think I may be seeing a pretty terrible beak shape problem and now am kind of panicking trying to figure out if I’m actually just being cruel letting the situation carry on. The beak doesn’t meet or close as far as I can tell and one half is covered in something gelatinous. I’m assuming this beak situation is why it couldn’t pip and am worried whether this is how bad cross beak starts. The gelatinous stuff doesn’t seem removable, not easily anyway. I don’t really understand how it’s able to breathe like that and I am not sure what to do with this egg now since it seems in some state of limbo. I have assisted the occasional hatch in the past but nothing like this. Just a lot seems wrong here between the tiny size of the animal, the clear goop, and the beak not looking as expected. I can’t tell if there are any other abnormalities under the membrane. The degree of red veiny-ness has not decreased at all overnight. But I have also never seen this situation before or read about it anywhere so I don’t know if it’s as dire as I’m interpreting. I have no idea how to humanely put down a still-in-egg chick if that’s what I should really be doing here…

Please don’t suggest something like just taking outside and smashing it. There has to be some less brutal option if it has to go that way. This is not an easy post for me and obviously I’m really wishing right now that I had just trusted the broody a few days back, set it aside, and never looked further to see what was going on with it.

 

[LaFleche]

I am sorry that you find yourself in this situation right now and you probably wish to never have intervened in the first place.

Broodies usually know when something is not right with the eggs/chicks which is why I let them do their thing on their own without intervention. With broodies I just let nature run its course.

By the little I can see from your picture of the opened egg, the chick seems to suffer from some kind of malformation, possibly would have died inside the egg without even pipping.
Speaking from my almost 25 years of experience, I would cull.

But it is up to you to decide how much longer you want to extend the situation or how far you want to proceed with the intervention.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

As far as culling…could you give it back to the hen as is? I imagine she would cull it for you. Maybe seems a bit brutal as well but I can’t think of anything that is quick and painless. When I had a broody reject chicks she was pecking them on the back of the head. They were running around screaming before I rescued them but I imagine with a helpless egg-bound chick that might be a reasonably merciful way to go.

 

[NewcoopNewpoop]

The broodie intended it to chill to death is my guess. I am sorry you are in this difficult situation.

 

[DonyaQuick]

At this late stage, would chilling still work to hasten things sufficiently fast? Or would that cause a drawn out screaming panic? In truth, as of right now, I’m sort of not sure how much the chick is “there”…it doesn’t respond to anything, just breaths. I wonder if it actually had some brain damage from lack of air flow before I made the mistake of “helping.” That would be the best case really…

I don’t want to risk encouraging cannibalism by putting it with other chickens. Paranoia over having seen other species get a taste and then want another.

I did wonder about just setting it out in the forest…something would find it fast and use it to feed its own young this time of year, I have no doubt. However I realize I also have the added problem that I really need to do a post mortem and find out exactly what was going on in case it’s a known lethal trait or known type of heritable deformity since I can’t see anything but that messed up beak. It could potentially make a big difference in decisions to hatch or not from the same birds in the future.

 

[MarlaMac]

Inhumane would be to allow prolonged suffering. If the chick is bound for death, the merciful thing to do is to end its suffering quickly, not let it chill to death or be pecked to death by others in the flock.

If it were my chick and I was resolved that it was going to die, I would end its life quickly.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Inhumane would be to allow prolonged suffering. If the chick is bound for death, the merciful thing to do is to end its suffering quickly, not let it chill to death or be pecked to death by others in the flock.

If it were my chick and I was resolved that it was going to die, I would end its life quickly.

I believe OP is asking for methods to do exactly that.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I chose a method; what's done is done now. The method is not great but I didn't seem to have any other reasonable options. I wrapped the egg tightly in plastic to cut off air flow, which increases CO2 fairly rapidly given the small volume. What I had at my disposal was limited. Were it not for the realization that I do actually need to suck it up and analyze things later, I was about ready to deal with it like I do with rodents that don't get a clean death from a trap. Before doing anything, I confirmed that it was totally unresponsive to sound and touch, which at that developmental stage means it was already brain damaged/dead. So things were actually somewhat "better" than I thought in my first post. I don't know exactly how long it takes for the CO2 ratio to get where it needs, but within just a minute or so the repetitive breathing motion had already become less and slower. Obviusly what I chose to do in this situation is not a method I would ever use on a chick that showed any signs of awareness because it is not as fast as other options, but from what I was frantically trying to search on it should be faster than chilling.

In the future I think I need a way to prepare an emergency CO2 bath, which is the only feasible option that I've seen listed for human euthanasia of chickens past day 18 from resesarch facilities and the like (the other methods also use gas but it's not stuff I can make or get). I wish I had something on hand to do that today but I'm out of vinegar, so I couldn't even do the vinegar and baking soda method for making a baloon of CO2. Similarly I have nothing suitable on hand right now to trap CO2/CO from exhaust.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I chose a method; what's done is done now. The method is not great but I didn't seem to have any other reasonable options. I wrapped the egg tightly in plastic to cut off air flow, which increases CO2 fairly rapidly given the small volume. What I had at my disposal was limited. Were it not for the realization that I do actually need to suck it up and analyze things later, I was about ready to deal with it like I do with rodents that don't get a clean death from a trap. Before doing anything, I confirmed that it was totally unresponsive to sound and touch, which at that developmental stage means it was already brain damaged/dead. So things were actually somewhat "better" than I thought in my first post. I don't know exactly how long it takes for the CO2 ratio to get where it needs, but within just a minute or so the repetitive breathing motion had already become less and slower. Obviusly what I chose to do in this situation is not a method I would ever use on a chick that showed any signs of awareness because it is not as fast as other options, but from what I was frantically trying to search on it should be faster than chilling.

In the future I think I need a way to prepare an emergency CO2 bath, which is the only feasible option that I've seen listed for human euthanasia of chickens past day 18 from resesarch facilities and the like (the other methods also use gas but it's not stuff I can make or get). I wish I had something on hand to do that today but I'm out of vinegar, so I couldn't even do the vinegar and baking soda method for making a baloon of CO2. Similarly I have nothing suitable on hand right now to trap CO2/CO from exhaust.

There was a post on here about a month ago about culling chicks using scissors that seemed very humane. The poster even had a way to keep everything calm and contained. I have never had to cull a chick so I can’t say from experience how it works and it wouldn’t have worked in your circumstances but worth looking into for the future.

 

[DonyaQuick]

There was a post on here about a month ago about culling chicks using scissors that seemed very humane. The poster even had a way to keep everything calm and contained. I have never had to cull a chick so I can’t say from experience how it works and it wouldn’t have worked in your circumstances but worth looking into for the future.

That or a similar method would have been on the table if it had hatched on its own but been lethally deformed. I had no visibility under that membrane though; I couldn't even see where the neck was (I haven't checked yet to see what's underneath; I will do later). Any attempt to get inside was going to bleed like crazy because the veins had never dried up - I wondered if that was how it was actually breathing, not so much the breathing motion. I will be able to answer that later I guess. Anyway, knowing the sorts of visually horrifically bad ways development can go wrong, I knew that if I opened it up in any way before it was dead and something extra awful spilled out in a wiggling state, it would have been even harder for me to deal with quickly/sanely.