Has anyone ever seen this?? Food stuck in a chick's mouth!

[princessmama]

We pulled it out and it seemed to be food. We feed Greener Pastures whole grain chick starter. We had no problems with our first batch of chicks. I pulled out several chicks today that had this problem. A couple of them are very lethargic so I separated them and have been feeding sugar/vitamin water. We were very busy this weekend and I'm wondering if it built up over the weekend and they didn't eat.


I'm thinking I may have added too much flax to the mix and maybe this is gumming things up. I had a little extra flax meal from cooking and thought it wouldn't hurt to dump the extra in the jar of chick feed since there is so little in it anyway. Oops!

 

[R@ndy]

Wow sure glad you caught it in time

 

[Gtown Farmer]

Try adding some Red Lake Earth to their feed. It's a non-caking Diatomaceous earth. I've heard that helps keep the food dry.

 

[princessmama]

I'll have to try that for sure. Thanks for the tip!

I still have four lethargic chicks. One throws a huge fit when I feed her with the eyedropper tho, good sign. Two others wiggle quite a bit, but one of my australorps is very sad

I hope she pulls through!

 

[georgialee]

Do you think their crops may be compacted?

 

[princessmama]

No, their crops felt empty. I felt them first thing.

Of the five I found this way, (I cleaned out their beaks and separated them from the others and fed them vit/sugar water since they were so lethargic) one is back in with the healthy chicks and four are still inside. One of the four looks great, two look so-so and one(one of my australorps

) looks terrible.

 

[SMan]

Have you tried some Polyvisol (seemed to work better than the water mix kind for me).. I did 3 drops a day on a week chick I had, now it's the queen chick. Also try mashing their food up more if this keeps happening.

Are they a smaller breed then your last set?

 

[princessmama]

I have Vita-Sol. They are not smaller than my last batch, these are RIR, BR, and Australorp. I have so far not had it happen again. The second RIR went back out with the other chicks this morning. And the other three were up a pecking at food for a little while, which was better than yesterday when they did not get up at all!

Still very droopy though. I'm still giving them vit in a dropper. I'm feeling more hopeful though!

I will look for the Polyvisol when I go to town Friday...

 

[LauraN]

Are you soaking the food? Mine didn't do well with this mix unless I soaked it. But I never had any with food stuck in their mouths, just slowed down. For maybe a week, I also ground up the mix before or after soaking it. It was a pain but I felt better and they seemed to like it that way. The sunflower seeds look so big for them! Hopefully it was just the extra flax you gave them. Hope they keep getting better!

Laura

 

[princessmama]

Thanks lauran--I have been grinding the food up very small. Two of the chicks have since begun to develop crossed beaks. One was doing so badly that I put her down last night. She seemed to be suffering and not getting any better.

four others are still doing poorly. The rest of my chicks are fine. I think by now the ones who had food stuck should have recovered esp with all the extra attention. so I don't know what's going on now.