I got some Whiting True Blue chicks from McMurray this past Friday. They came out of the box strong and active, all are drinking, but for some reason there's one that doesn't seem to get eating. It was very vocal the first night and its crop was empty so I hand fed it some baby bird hand feeding formula, it took almost 3 ccs, then settled right down and went to sleep. Yesterday I saw it pecking at crumbles, saw it drinking water, thought it was okay, but then late in the day it seemed to have slowed down, I picked it up and it had a slight case of pasty butt and an empty crop, so I fed it again, and noticed it was pecking at the syringe, so it seemed to know that's where the food was coming from and it wasn't blind. Today, same thing, this time if a bit dripped out of the syringe it would go get what dripped, so again, it can see. A couple hours after I fed it I put my hand in the brooder to scatter crumble to the area it was in and it immediately ran over to my hand and started pecking at my fingers as if there was food there. I put a little crumble in my hand and let it climb onto my hand and it pecked around a bit but still didn't seem to make the connection that the crumble is food. All the others are eating just fine. This one looks like it may be rumpless, and I do remember reading some years back that rumplessness can come with some fragility but I've never experienced this before, and I've raised a lot of chicks. Anyone else ever have this?
