Derperella, the (weird) Faverolles, & Friends

[polishchickens111]

Oh Nambroth, can you help? I'm dealing with a derpy feedstore rescue with a failure to thrive. She just drank maybe 1/4 eyedropperful of sugar water. She is a couple days old and runty enough to hide inside the feeder.

Any suggestions?

 

[Lobzi]

I will post pics of them as they mature.
This is a great thread. Im enjoying reading both the posts and sharing in it.

 

[Nambroth]

Oh Nambroth, can you help? I'm dealing with a derpy feedstore rescue with a failure to thrive. She just drank maybe 1/4 eyedropperful of sugar water. She is a couple days old and runty enough to hide inside the feeder.

Any suggestions?

Keep her warm enough, hydrated, and keep as much nutrition in her that you can. Derperella really would only take sugar water for a few days, which is not at all ideal (their bodies grow so fast and need more than sucrose!!) but it was better than her dying. Once she learned that food 'came' from the eyedropper I was using, I got her to accept some greek yogurt (I now use thick kefir) and then soaked/soft chick starter on it.

When I was working with Derp, I pretty much had her with me trying to get food/liquid into her at all times, except when she was sleeping (where she slept under the ceramic heat bulb). It was a lot of work!

 

[drumstick diva]

polishchickens111 Get her some Polyvisol - (NO IRON) infant vitamin drops- 2-3 drops a couple times a day. Hard boiled egg yolk mashed fine, too much (sugar)in water may give her diarhhea.. Keep her in a draft free environment with a heat lamp. - allow enough room so she can move away from it if she feels too warm. If she's an only one - give her a small stuffed animal to cuddle with, A snall mirror is good also - so she will think she has a friend.

Teach her where food is by tapping your finger on the rim of the dish - do likewise for water -add marbles to the water container to prevent drowning. Is she showing signs of illness? Maybe she was just pushed away from food by more aggressive chicks..

 

[polishchickens111]

Keep her warm enough, hydrated, and keep as much nutrition in her that you can. Derperella really would only take sugar water for a few days, which is not at all ideal (their bodies grow so fast and need more than sucrose!!) but it was better than her dying. Once she learned that food 'came' from the eyedropper I was using, I got her to accept some greek yogurt (I now use thick kefir) and then soaked/soft chick starter on it.

When I was working with Derp, I pretty much had her with me trying to get food/liquid into her at all times, except when she was sleeping (where she slept under the ceramic heat bulb). It was a lot of work!

Thanks. She has taken some sugar water. All the toes on one foot are bent, making me think this is some genetic deficiency. She also keeps shaking her head.

 

[polishchickens111]

polishchickens111 Get her some Polyvisol - (NO IRON) infant vitamin drops- 2-3 drops a couple times a day. Hard boiled egg yolk mashed fine, too much (sugar)in water may give her diarhhea.. Keep her in a draft free environment with a heat lamp. - allow enough room so she can move away from it if she feels too warm. If she's an only one - give her a small stuffed animal to cuddle with, A snall mirror is good also - so she will think she has a friend.

Teach her where food is by tapping your finger on the rim of the dish - do likewise for water -add marbles to the water container to prevent drowning. Is she showing signs of illness? Maybe she was just pushed away from food by more aggressive chicks..

Thank you. She is with the four other runty, lethargic chicks I rescued from the feedstore, except the other 4 perked up with some electrolytes and a vent-clearing. They are already in a draft-free area, with a heat lamp, and a stuffed animal. She likes to smush herself under the others.

She know where the food and water is- she drank a couple times and gets herself stuck inside the feeder. It's just that she won't eat/drink. I always add marbled until 1 week of age. She is definitely showing signs of unnaturalness, like shaking her head back and forth. However, all her toes on one foot are bent, so my suspicion is that this is genetic.

 

[artsyrobin]

what about making a broth of the crumbles and get some nutrition into her that way?

 

[polishchickens111]

what about making a broth of the crumbles and get some nutrition into her that way?

I can try... she doesn't seem to be able to peck. I made a mush of crumbles and water and then put some crumbles into the honey/water mix, just thick enough that it still goes into the dropper. She took is but seemed to like it less, spraying it everywhere.

 

[Nambroth]

Derperella was like your chick. She knew how to peck (she liked to peck the other chick's faces) and knew what food was. She just wouldn't eat.

I used to make liquid meals for Derp, and at first she wouldn't take them. The ONLY thing I could get her to take was sugar water with some electrolytes/vitamins in it (as mentioned above... Polyvisol without iron). After a while she started to take other liquids, though. Things you can try: boiled egg yolk, mashed into a paste and then stirred with warm water to make egg-yolk-soup... powdered chick starter (I used a blender to turn it to powder), soaked with water then turned into a 'broth' as described above... plain yogurt or kefir, mixed with water enough to make it liquid...

Even once she started taking solids, she wouldn't eat them unless they came on the tip of an eyedropper, stick, or spoon. She would try to eat the food with the other chicks in their feeder, but wouldn't get anywhere.

This message is not for polishchickens111-- it's for everyone! Especially folks that wanted me to breed Derp. Realistically, such failure to thrive would be the end of the chick in a natural setting-- nature only 'wants' the strongest genetics to pass on, ensuring greater survivability of a species and so forth. While I do not regret saving Derp (not one bit!) I also know that I should never let her pass on her genetics and so I will enjoy her life for what it is.

 

[drumstick diva]

Could you fashion a little shoe for her - using bandaids to hold her feet to a piece cardboard. I know there are articles about this on BYC you could search for. You have to give her a name so she's knows she is not disaposable. We want to send healing vibes to her. I know how horribly upsetting it is when babies don't eat.