Emergency - crushed chick egg in nest, unsure how to move forward... do I help?

[thistlewick]

Pics included -- I found this chick this morning in the nest, late hatcher -- unsure if it tried to hatch and got crushed or if it was attempted to be eaten (I have an egg eater and I cannot find the culprit, the cameras only start recording AFTER movement... believe me when I tell you how pissed off I am)


What can I do to help this little one? I had NO CLUE what to do, so I put it in the incubator and kicked up the humidity to help -- the shell is STUCK to it. It is absolutely alive. Not sure how well, it's not peeping, but it's moving on it's own and responds to stimulus.

I'm absolutely willing to help it - just don't know how to move forward. Any help/instructions at all would be grateful.

Spoiler

 

[Perris]

Personally, I would let it go. There is probably a reason why it's a late hatcher, and that, plus this hatching misfortune, plus not peeping, plus being abandoned by the broody (I assume that from your text, maybe mistakenly) all suggest to me that life would be a real struggle for this chick, even if it can extract itself from the shell. It may be kinder just to let it go in peace rather than subject it to well-meaning interventions.

 

[thistlewick]

I ended up helping it out -- it had absorbed all its veins -- I am assuming that the yolk it was meant to absorb was possibly eaten.

We will see if it will make it

But YES you were right @Perris there was some strange calcium deposits inside the egg sac, it looked like extra hard meaty bits or extra soft calcium bits -- somewhere between the two.

It was peeping like crazy though when I was working it out -- the inner egg sac was THICK and strong.


Will see how it goes - it's resting in the incubator.