Difficulties for new Aussie Mum

[Sleepless Mum]

I am an Australian Teacher, Grandmother and Newby to chicken hatching. Not going to give you the long version of the story, but have been having some difficulty. It is winter here and it took me over a week to collect 23 eggs to hatch. I had 6 Holden Laced Wyandottes, 6 Australorps and 11 Lavender Ameraucanas. Day 21, 22 AND 23 came and went. Stressed, read as much as I could online, including a lot from this site. General consensus seemed to be they can be fine up to day 25. Started hatching night of Day 23, 5 have hatched and two have died after hatching. Still have the remaining ones in the incubator. I floated them last night and 4 sank and the remaining floated. Question at present is the hatched ones seem to be taking a long time to recover and at least one has a leg problem. Have taken a photo, if I can will upload for you to see. Day 25 today. No Ameraucanas have even pipped. What should I do? Does anyone have any helpful information to ease my mind, especially about the chicks leg.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

That unfortunately is the problem with long hatches. The chicks have enough food and energy for 23 days (21 days to hatch then 2 days afterwards as siblings finish hatching...then mum gets up and leads them to food and water).

When your chicks take too long to hatch, they are simply out of energy reserves by the time they come out at day 25. They also can get fused leg bones from being in the shell too long.

It can also be poor incubation temperatures. I suspicion your incubator was too cool?

Or it can be poor genetics in the line.

Feed all chicks by eye dropper with Chick Saver, and if you can get your hands on it, you may consider giving them also some antibiotics as being in the shell that long often causes some lingering bacterial infections in those slowly closing navals. Look at all the tummies to see if any are swollen and if any legs are puffy.

There are some threads here to show how to splint a splayed leg. It can be from bone deformity, stiffness from being in the shell, to poor genetics, to a brain to muscle path coordination that is funked by being in the shell too long.

Good luck with them. Slow hatches have not been very successful for me. The chicks that survive seem to never do very well.

Sorry to not be the bearer of better news...but not all hope is lost. Load those who hatch up with chick saver and set out warm mash (chick start with some yogurt) and I have managed to save a few who grew into adults who kept up with the flock (but were never my strongest birds).

LofMc