Chick with stunted growth?

[Nonny]

I posted this originally in teh Breeds section, thinking maybe my chick was slow growing because of her breed, but it looks like that's not the reason.

Here she is the day we got her (at around 2 days old):

And this is her now, almost 2 weeks later, with the other girls:

She looks about a week behind in her development to me, and I'm wondering if it was the cocci infection she caught that did it, or is she just going to be a runt?

 

[Chinchilla2]

I'm guessing that is Lacey there. The cocci may have slowed her down a bit but she really doesn't look that much smaller than the dark and yellow one in the second picture. Just not quite as feathered in the wing. When my Sussexes were that young, they were visually behind my BOs but at four weeks they were starting to outpace in height. I'd give her a bit more before saying conclusively she wound up stunted.

 

[Nonny]

Yes, that's Lacey, and the other dark and yellow one is Freckles the Ancona chick, who is almost as small as Lacey but has way more feather and wing growth. If I look just at Lacey's feathers, there's almost no discernible difference between now and when we got her.

It's funny, I gave up worrying about my super skinny children by the time I had my third one (I obviously just breed skinny kids LOL), but having chicks seems to have bought out the mother hen in me again. I should stop Googling pics of 2wk old chicks... they all seem to have wings and tails.

 

[Arielle]

Quote:
LOL

I see a variety of development among my chicks too. Since I can't be sure it's genetics I recheck things like amount of feed available, space at the feeders, availability of water and all the other things it MIGHT be. Like a mother hen. LOL I even give yogurt occassionally as most feeds do not contain such things as good microbes. ANd I do put ACV in the water, it keeps the slime down as well.

GL with Lacey.

 

[CarolJ]

I have a group of 4 week old chicks - and there is one chick that has changed very little from when they were a few days old. It still have very few feather and is easily 1/4 the size of the other chicks now. Either it has stunted growth or a bantam chick somehow got mixed into the group. I asked a bunch of people about it - and apparently it's not uncommon to have one chick that's a runt. The runt may end up having a growth spurt later - or it may continue to be smaller than the others. Only time will tell.