I was out of town this morning when my daughter called to tell me that my hens had all the little chicks out in the rain and that 2 of them were almost dead. One was laying off to the side of the coop and the other under a lawn chair. They are just tiny 3 day old bantams. She put them on a paper towel and back into the coop telling me they were gasping for air and ice cold. We are in the middle of a torrential downpour here and it has cooled down a lot. (NH) So my hubby and I headed home and got here in about an hour, he went to the coop(doghouse) that she put them in and said "what do you want me to do, they are just about dead"...first I was going to have him finnish them off, but them I said "bring them to me, I want to try something". Well, one was on its last breath for sure, and the other was hardly breathing, and doing so with a gaping open mouth and they were like drowned rats and cold and stiff. I took them into the house and ran the warm water in the sink and made a litle "hot tub" out of cupping my hands being careful not to let them get water in their beaks. I could feel one of them start to move and so then I wrapped them both in a paper towel and placed them in the bator with eggs that are due in another week. I have 2 bators going, one allready has chicks, so I used the one just with eggs in case something might be catchy! About an hour later I can hear peeping so loud so I look in on the live chick bator and they are all peeping, but the noise is coming from the other bator, one of the chicks was all fluffed off and running around, but the other did not make it. I feel so good that I saved it! Never give up, there is allways hope.
ETA: About an hour or so later I went to check on any unhatched eggs in the coop(which is actually a large dog house) and saw one egg that was not even in the nest area of where the others had hatched. I picked it up and it was cold as a stone and as I rolled it over in my hand, it had a small hole about 1/4" and a beak poking out, but it looked like it was dead. Then all of a sudden there was a weak peep coming from it, so up to the sink and I ran the egg under warm water and slowly peeled off the upper half of the shell, then I must have hit a vein because all this blood came out and so I wrapped it in a paper toel and put it ion the bator with "revival" chicken...just checked in on it and it is out of its shell and all fluffed dry! I cant believe I saved 2 deaths door chicks and cannot manage to even hatch a dozen eggs!
