chick's arrived today!

[katiefloy]

Hi everyone. I received my first baby chicks in the mail today and thank god all 10 made it! I have them in the brooder with a heat plate, a chick waterer (with save a chick) and a chick feeder (with gro gel and medicated food) and paper towels over the wood shavings. I plan to take out the gro gel after it has been in there 6 hours (they seem to prefer the chick feed better anyway). How long should I keep the save a chick in the water?

They are doing really well with using the feeder and waterer so I was wondering if I can remove the paper towels or if I should keep them in their a few more days. They were born Monday April 6 if that matters. They are going under and out of the heat plate and eating and drinking, so hopefully they have everything they need.

At least one of them has pasty butt (I assume that is what the hard plug like thing stuck to her butt was), so I soaked her bottom in warm water and rubbed until it came off (I did this twice, I don't know if it was the same chick or not, but they were both super fluffy). I hope that was the right thing to do. I am checking them all periodically to make sure they are clear back there. There wasn't a heat pack in the box with them, so they may have gotten cold before I got them. They all hung out under the heat plate for a while when I first put them in. They keep trying to jump on top of the heat plate, so I put an empty paper towel roll in there for them to jump on if they want.

Please let me know if you think of anything I should do differently!

TIA!

 

[rosemarythyme]

With something like sav-a-chick I'd say a week at most... it's really there to help them deal with shipping stress so no need to keep them on it any longer than that.

As far as the paper towels no harm leaving it in there for now, I'd probably remove it when it was time to clean and just not replace it at that point. But no reason to take it out right now (though if you want to, I think that's fine too... just an extra step).