gasping for air....

[savingpurple]

Now I have very little experience, passed a 2 week period with chicks as that is as long as we have them at work prior to selling them. With that in mind, the one little "it" (unable to determine what sex it is) was the very badly injured one. He rebounded quite well, with some true TLC from me.

My questions comes as of last night, he was fine and then all of a sudden he was acting as if he was gasping for air. I did lots of fast reading on this site and a few others, to find mainly 2 conclusions for this. Every chick at work that does this ends up dying. The first conclusion I read was it meant it was too hot for them, and the second was lack of food.

I turned off the heat lamp, as the room is very warm to begin with. I also moved the feeder from the corner of the box to the middle, thinking as he is one week behind all the others, they might be pushing him out of the way, making it hard for him to get any. Said my prayers he would survive the night, and today he seems fine.

As they have grown so much, and have over 50% of their feathers, I think, they have been moved to the garage. Cooler temps, but still with the heat lamp.

Do you think he is fine now, or keep an eye on him? thanks in advance

 

[kla37]

Glad you seem to have figured it out! I think they really get too hot sometimes. I didn't let our brooder have temps about 90 the first week, and they still weren't ever directly under the light. I think too much heat is bad. Keep an eye on him, but if he's eating and drinking and acting like a goofy chick now, he'll probably be OK.