Day old chick spasming, lethargic

cyfarian

Chirping
Jun 5, 2020
57
32
68
Maryland, USA
Greetings. I had a malpositioned cream legbar chick that pipped only, and i slowly fully assisted the rest of the hatch. In the 10 hours since she hatched, she has made no effort to move, except for what looks like fidgetting or spasms. You can also see she is opening and closing her mouth rapidly, like they do after pipping. I put her beak in magic water and later a nutritional yeast solution. She swallowed both times. She only makes noise if I pick her up; She is otherwise silent.

The two other surviving chicks are fine.

Once she dried I put her in the brooder in a separate container so the others wouldn't trample her. Because she is only laying on her side, i made a donut out of paper towels to try to get her feet under her

I used a different incubator than normal and had 3 out of 5 eggs malpositioned (2 of which suffocated).The ventilation and rotating in the incubator is illsuited for chickens, i now realize. (Ignore the hygrometer in the brooder... it isn't accurate.)

I have someone picking up sav-a-chick. What else can I do? What do you think is causing her "spasms"? What do you think her prognosis is?

EDIT: i continued the info in the next comment below.
 
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I almost feel like she is acting like the stage of hatching at the internal pip where they are still learning to breath and resting. I was a bit agressive and hatching her due to the 2 malpositioned chicks that had died today prior to pipping. Is it possible that since I manually did ALL of her hatching except the for the pip, that she is still at the resting stage prior to trying to hatch? She did absorb the yoke by the time i finished hatching her but I did keep hitting blood and having to put her back into the incubator. Having done several assists before for non-upside down malpositions, i stupidly forgot that her internal pip and external pip where one and the same.

So maybe this is just where her body would have been resting and getting ready to do the work to hatch?
 
If my theory in my second comment is correct, then the neck spasms might just be the "hatching muscle" with its normal swelling of fluid to begin pipping. The spasms seems to have stopped now. She is still sleeping. Hopefully my theory is correct and she will be fine soon. Here is a more recent video.
 

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