Days Old Chick Will Not Eat

[McChickenFarm]

Hi all, we received a shipment of chicks yesterday and one is quite smaller than the rest, a bit wobbly on her feet and has not eaten. She will drink fine, droppings are watery. Chirps frequently. I’ve tried putting food in front of her but she has no interest. Will pop in and out of the heat plate but doesn’t move very quickly. I did put electrolytes in their water.

Any suggestions? In the pic, she’s on the left. Thanks!

Courtney

 

[kattabelly]

Try some egg yolk, either just a drop at a time held to her beak until she starts to swallow it or syringe fed if you're confident you can do that without her aspirating any. Watering it down very slightly can make it an easier consistency if you're letting her drink it.

 

[nuthatched]

She may be still living on the yolk

 

[McChickenFarm]

Try some egg yolk, either just a drop at a time held to her beak until she starts to swallow it or syringe fed if you're confident you can do that without her aspirating any. Watering it down very slightly can make it an easier consistency if you're letting her drink it.

Thanks! Gave her some yolk mixed with water and she ate a bit. How often should I feed her this?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Have you dipped her wet beak in the crumbles? I do this with all my shipped birds and they seem to catch on real quick.

 

[kattabelly]

Thanks! Gave her some yolk mixed with water and she ate a bit. How often should I feed her this?

What I do is keep insisting until they really refuse to eat any more. If their crop feels fairly full, check in a couple of hours and feed again if it's mostly empty or check again an hour later if it's still full the first time. If they're only taking tiny amounts and never get close to a full crop, I feed hourly until they start taking more, or looking for food themselves.

You can do the same with chick crumb but it's easiest to grind it into dust first, so they don't just swallow the watery bits of the mash and not eat the actual crumbs.

 

[McChickenFarm]

Have you dipped her wet beak in the crumbles? I do this with all my shipped birds and they seem to catch on real quick.

I have, she has no interest.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

I have had luck blending up the crumbles a little to make them smaller for the babies to eat! This has never happened to me in the past, but one of the new babies is smaller than the others and would just peck at the crumbles instead of eating them, and I guessed they were probably to big for her tiny beak so I blended them up for like literally only 3 seconds in my magic bullet and she has no trouble anymore!
It's good that she ate some of the yolk. Maybe try mixing that with crumbles to make a mushy consistency? Perhaps she has low energy. That's great you are providing electrolytes, but perhaps try sugar water? I've never made it myself but I've heard from folks on here that it "revives" their lethargic chicks. I believe it's 1 tsp sugar for a quart waterer. This is all I can think of, but I hope it helps and that your baby eats by herself soon

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I have, she has no interest.

Really sorry to hear. Not sure what to tell you. @NatJ ? @DobieLover? @Debbie292d? Any suggestions here?

 

[DobieLover]

I just went through a horrific experience with extreme shipping stress that I was ill prepared for.
I lost 9 out of 13. The chicks had been flown to be in cargo. Not good.
I read about 'miracle water' and made a batch for the 4 survivors.
One of the 4 started to fail and I aggressively dosed her with the miracle water with some poultry cell in it and I saved her. She is a bit smaller than the other three but is extremely vigorous and active now.
To make the miracle water add one large minced or crushed clove of garlic to a half gallon of warm water, add one tablespoon organic apple cider vinegar and 1/4 cup raw honey. Mix it well and let it steep. Because you need it now just draw out a syringe of it and mix it with a little poultry cell or another poultry vitamin supplement and start working on getting that into the chick. I gave 1/2 ml of the mixture every 30 minutes and kept the chick on a heating pad.
After trying to save the first 9 chicks and them dying every time, I was not convinced I was going to save this 10th one. But after 2.5 hours she was fluttering around the indoor brooder, eye wide open and chirping away. Again, skeptical, I decided to put her back under the brooder plate in the maternity ward of my coop with her hatch mates expecting her to be gone by morning. Needless to say, I was delighted to go out to the coop and find her zipping around with her hatch mates greedily eating the food in the trough and drinking the miracle water in the baby bottle.
I think that what really mattered was that I started treating that chick as soon as she started showing trouble. Any delay and all bets are off.