Day-old chick bleeding vent, shivering/bobbing and lethargic, Help please.

[chickyrose]

It's 2:44 A.M. and I am sitting beside my brooder keeping an eye on the little guy and it doesn't look encouraging. Pretty new to all this, so I've been reading and searching like a mad person. Ok, from the beginning. We already have 4 goslings and 10 2-week old Bonnie Reds. Today, my husband brought home our chicks (39 chicks and 11 ducklings), these little guys had to travel almost 6 hours to get here. Needless to say they were pretty limp. I gave them water and introduced them to feed. Almost half of these chicks are 2 weeks old so they got right to it and soon everyone was perky and drinking or pecking.

My husband noticed one of the little Belgian Bearded D'Uccles (the tiniest of our chicks and feisty little fellows) pecking the vent of a Buff Cochin. We shooed it away but the damage was done, the Buff Cochin was bleeding. We washed the blood, cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide, and gently dried the little guy. We isolated the Buff Cochin and gave him/her water and feed. This was about 10pm. He's only pecked at the feed a couple times since then and only drinks when I dip his beak in the water. Twice now, the Cochin has picked its own vent and bled profusely. And once pooped out bloody poop which lead it to pick at its vent the second time. We have washed, disinfected and dried this little guy each time but my eyes are drooping and I don't think I can stay up all night, plus my 11 month old daughter is due for her feeding soon. This happened too late for me to run out and get styptic sticks or something like that. Oh and the Cochin is mostly standing and drooping forward, I only saw it lay down once this entire time. Also when I cleaned the backend, I didn't really see where the wound really is...it looks like the vent itself is bleeding. It didn't have pasty butt. I'm afraid this little guy won't make it to morning and I'm terrified to leave it alone, in case it pecks itself again and bleeds out for my son to discover in the wee hours of the morning. Am I missing something here? Is there any way to save this guy? My other chicks look fine, 3 other buff Cochin behaving normal. Not sure whether to send a letter out to the hatchery or just chalk this up to pecking. Ok, it's eyes are open now, will see if I can tempt it to drink again and then I must go to daughter and pray it will survive the night.

 

[kellysmall87]

You are doing all you can, bless you! Try segregating the little chick? Keeping it on it's own? Put something it wont like the taste of on its vent like germoline or some other antiseptic cream. I put that on one of my injured chicks (it's mother attacked it) and the others too one peck at the cream and recoiled in disgust.

 

[chickyrose]

Thank you kellysmall87, I have the little chick isolated on its own. It survived the night but didn't fare any better today. Just stood in place and dozed all day, and won't drink unless I dipped its beak in the water. New development, something fleshy is hanging out of its vent. It is so hard to watch this. I almost wish it died last night. I've become very protective of the other Cochins as well, part of me wants to isolate them but don't want problems integrating them back into the flock. Well, I'm considering a humane way to put the little one down. Going to do some more researching first. Thanks for replying kellysmall87, I checked in earlier but had no time to reply.