First big scare with chicks!

[kuhnse51]

I'm a chicken newbie. I have 6 eleven week old chicks that I hatched from eggs and I'm on my second batch of assorted chicks right now. They are 3 weeks old today and 3 of them are a week old (Replacements for 3 that died within a couple days of arrival of the chicks who are now 3 weeks old. I also had one die suddenly last week of unknown causes.)So now I have 26 chicks who have been quite the trouble makers today! The past few days I've been nursing one of my hamburgs back to life (She seems to be doing fine now, fingers crossed!) I rushed home from a full day of work to make sure she was still doing alright and I open the door to chickens all over the room! I have a netting covering my brooder and someone figured out how to get it loose and escape and the rest followed, leaving a couple tangled in the net. So after I got all the poop cleaned up, tangled chicks set free and a headcount done I thought I was in the clear for the day. Well I thought wrong! After dinner I heard a chick screaming from the brooder and I figured it was just the chicks being chicks, but I checked it out still. I found my favorite chick , Copper, my buff brahma, to be the culprit of the loud peeps...of course. It appeared as if nothing was wrong, no other chicks were close enough to be picking on it. I looked closer and saw its beak was slightly open with its tongue kinda sticking out. I investigated further and figured out that Copper had somehow gotten a few strands of my long hair wrapped around its tongue. I think one of the other chicks was standing on the hair causing its tongue to be tugged on, which led to the distress calls. I couldn't just pull it out because it only pulled on its tongue, it was stuck in there pretty good. So I called my mom in to help hold it while I went in with a pair of tweezers and cuticle scissors to set its tongue free. I'm not too familiar with the inside of a chicken's mouth so I was nervous I might cut something I wasn't supposed to. After a few minutes of finagling around in the chick's mouth I finally was able to release Copper's tongue from the chokehold that the hairball had on it. Copper was a little worn out from the whole ordeal and seemed kind of thankful that we were able to help. He was the cuddliest he has ever been to me afterwards

Just felt like sharing this little story of my day with you all. If anyone has any stories like this with their chickens share away!
Now here is a couple pictures of Copper.

Oh, and if anyone can tell if Copper is a boy or a girl yet please let me know!

 

[Wyandottes7]

I"m glad to hear that Copper turned out all right! I've had something similar happen to one of my chicks before. It somehow got a piece of string wrapped around its tongue. Fortunately, we managed to deatatch the string and save her!

I think that it is a little too young to tell gender yet. But, I'm leaning towards pullet.

 

[kuhnse51]

I'm glad it all worked out for your chick too! It was a little frightening when I first figured out what was going on. I originally thought some type of horrible illness when I saw its tongue sticking out but I was actually kind of relieved to see it was just hair! I'm hoping that you're right on guess, I would hate to have to get rid of Copper :/