Chick pecking at air?

[hurricanearran]

I have 5 week old chicks. Tonight I observed one chick pecking at the air like she was trying to catch bugs? Seems like odd behavior because there are no bugs at the mo. She also appears to be all puffed up where the others aren't. Searched the net to no avail. Any thoughts?

 

[chickerdoodle]

A few questions just to check the basics:

Is the chick eating and drinking normally?
Does she walk around OK?
Are any of the other chicks interacting with the chick?
Is she pooping normally (no pasty but right?) and what does the poo look like?
How many chicks do you have?
Do you have enough feeding and water stations?
Have you checked carefully to see if any wounds on the chick?
Does it appear like seizures?
What are you feeding? I know some deficiencies can cause neurological disturbances.
It's a new one to me but I'm not an expert-- maybe its such tiny bugs you can't see them!

 

[Judy]

Is it possible she has gapeworm? Easy enough to look in the mouth and throat.

 

[hurricanearran]

I'll admit I'm not in the coop enough to answer many of the questions chickerdoodle has asked. We have 21 chicks in a 4x8 room inside the coop. We have each a 5 gallon feeder and waterer. We are feeding a high quality chick starter and have electroyle plus vitamin supplements in water. I believe this particular chick has not been terribly active where the other chicks are running around and curious. I chalked this up to a personality thing more than sickness. I did check her out for visible injuries and oddities but saw nothing.
It was the "pecking" at the air that struck my boyfriend and I as odd. I thought about gapeworms but the symptoms didn't seem to fit but I'll investigate further. I dont suspect actual bugs as its rather cold here at the moment and there aren't bugs about anywhere. The chicken coop itself is at about 70*F and up.
We have another chick with wry neck at the moment too and one died at two weeks from wry neck like symptoms. It's strange because our first batch of 50 chicks were all totally healthy and lived till adulthood with no sickness (until the mink got most of them). So to be seeing illness in this batch is alarming because our fist batch were so heAlthy.
This current batch were hatched from the roo and hens of our first batch so we wonder about inbreeding? I go on...