Hawkeye, I hope you feel better soon, that's a bummer.
Danz, I tried to do some searching about his problem, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of reliable information about it. It seems that nobody knows that much about why it occurs, but there isn't a lot of information pointing to any genetic thing. On one study they seemed to conclude that younger flocks may have a higher incidence, but really no conclusive reason or answers. It doesn't seem to be something that has been studied that much or that long, so it's kind of one of those mysteries it seems. The lady I got the eggs from says she hatches out a lot of eggs from these birds & has only seen this happen on a couple of poults, so I don't know. There is a lot of speculation out there as to why it occurs, but not a lot of concrete scientific evidence.
HeChicken, I never could find the post you were talking about from the person using the cups. I know some people have set them in a tiny box or even carried them in their pocket all day, yuk. I thought I would try sitting one especially bad one in a cup for awhile, but I hate to leave it like that for hours while I'm gone tonight. It's strange because sometimes they seem worse & other times they seem better. The little black spanish does seem to be somewhat better today. From reading some of the posts from people it seems like if you can keep them alive for a few days they do seem to "outgrow" it at some point & then are OK. The trick I guess is to keep them alive long enough. I do have them on sav-a-chick in their water, which I read people were using & the vitamin E capsules a couple times a day. So we'll just see where this all goes I guess. I hope I can get them out of this hatcher soon so I can get it cleaned up & ready for my next big batch of eggs due to go in on Weds.
Well I need to start getting my animals fed & watered early so I can make myself presentable for tonight. This is one of those things you want to go to but yet almost dread at the same time. Have a good night!