dying silkies

[DK]

Order silkie from McM pick them up on monday all look ok. I got 10 black and 10 white and now the black one are dying one a day. Have know ideal why? This is my first time with silkies but I have had 100 of chick in my brooder never had them die like this. Are silkies chick that hard to raise? All the other chick are looking good so far. The black ones look like runts they are so small.Has anyone had this happen before? DK

 

[Chickenmaven]

Sorry to hear of this. No, Silkies are not notoriously fragile. So, if you have "done chicks" before, I cannot imagine that you are bungling this.
Contact the hatchery.

Good luck!

 

[Katy]

Are they able to get enough to eat? When I hatched some silkies I ground the food up pretty fine because they seemed to be having trouble eating the regular crumble.

 

[wyndski]

Quote:
I agree, you check that out. I had a small bantam chick hatch and I had it get weak and not look real good. I gave it a bit of honey on the beak (wouldn't eat anything). Then it started coming around and was looking for food. I watched it close and while it was pecking at the food it wasn't able to eat the crumble. I ended up mixing a little of mine with water and it gobbled it right up when it was soft. I would however try chopping up the crumble with a food processor first. Because now mine prefers to eat it damp and proclaims loudly when doesn't get her way.

 

[LadyShred]

I've been raising baby chicks for years as well and I had a similar incident with a hatchery just last week. 6 chicks were dead at the post office and 14 more were dying. I contacted the hatchery about it and they let me wait a few more days to see which ones survived from the clutch. We only have 4 left now out of 25 + 3 extras, so they're sending a replacement order. Some happenings are just out of our control. The problem with mine is that they arrived late and couldn't make up for the loss of their yolk. They were too weak to eat, even though I tried EVERYTHING to get them to toughen up. One sumatra bantam hung on for 3 DAYS!!! I dropped water on his beak and fed him little scrambled egg and honey and starter grower by hand the whole time. But he couldn't put any weight on. He died on the 23rd (he hatched on the 18th).

A good hatchery will understand and work with you on things like this.