HELP- New baby Chicks !! ***please!!

[The Cave]

Yeah we got them from store drove 30 min back home and put them in a made up brooder and set up heat lamp.

If you put a digital thermometer in there for the first two weeks baby chicks should be kept at 95 degrees Fahrenheit. After that, you can raise the heat lamp by a few inches to decrease the temperature by about 5 degrees for each week until the chicks have their full feathers

 

[humblehillsfarm]

They should be ~100 degrees when very young. Do you have a thermometer?

I would say 95-100 degrees measuring about 1" above the litter/bedding material, with a their food and water located away from the heat lamp. Chicks that age with a mother hen are already leaving her warmth for food and water, and do not want or need the entire brooder heated.

Edited to add: Also use chick vitamins or nutridench in their water. That may help perk them up!

 

[LCsAChickenLover]

I second what @The Cave says. The digital thermometer I got for my chicks last year was best $35 bucks I’ve spent for peace of mind

 

[Eden83_haaretz]

Is it normal that they aren’t walking very well and falling over?

From my recent chick experience (first time with a baby chick also) it is normal. My chick basically slept all day. After 24 hrs I gave it water with an eye dropper. Then a while after I started to feed it a mix of corn flour (the Mexican type that is made from corn that is "nixtamalizado" which is basically corn softened with ashes or limestone, thus making the proteins more available), a few black cooked beans and a tiny bit of canned tuna (all made into a paste basically). The day after the chick was really strong and now it's super lively. We're talking about 5 days after hatching (it did take a while for it to gain strength, but the food really helped).

 

[LCsAChickenLover]

Yeah we got them from store drove 30 min back home and put them in a made up brooder and set up heat lamp.

You could try to give them sugar water to perk them up. I believe it’s 2teaspoons to 1 cup warm water

 

[furbabies86]

I know they don’t have a lot of space here. We are heading out in an hour to get a bigger brooder. We put the heat lamp up higher so it wasn’t hot since they do not have a space at the moment with shade. But they are currently all standing. Current picture

 

[furbabies86]

Usually with a brooder, you have one side with the heat lamp and one side with shade. So they can move away if they overheat.

I know they don’t have a lot of space here. We are heading out in an hour to get a bigger brooder. We put the heat lamp up higher so it wasn’t hot since they do not have a space at the moment with shade. But they are currently all standing. Current picture

 

[LCsAChickenLover]

I know they don’t have a lot of space here. We are heading out in an hour to get a bigger brooder. We put the heat lamp up higher so it wasn’t hot since they do not have a space at the moment with shade. But they are currently all standing. Current picture

Glad they are standing, that’s a good sign. The things I would add to the larger brooder would be something to provide shade to cool down and some sort of thermometer to gauge temp.

 

[NatJ]

how do we know without watching them 24/7 if they are even getting food/water.

a) Watch them for 5-10 minutes. Healthy chicks eat and drink frequently while they are awake. If some are eating and drinking, the others will usually learn from them.

b) Gently feel their crops. The crop is where the food goes when they first eat it, before it gets digested. It's on their front at the base of the neck, often a little bit to one side or the other. The crop gets empty and flat if they sleep all night, and gets round and full when they eat a lot. It's common for a tiny chick to have a crop as big and round as a marble, or as big as the end of your thumb, at some times during the day--some people worry that the chick grew a tumor, but it empties out again as they sleep, and then they eat some more.


You might want to put some glass marbles or clean stones in the water dish. The chicks peck at them because they're shiny, get water in their beak, and decide it's good to drink. They also keep chicks from falling asleep in the water and drowning, or squishing each other into the water. (Chicks often do fine with no marbles in the water, but at some point I decided marbles are worth the bother to me for the first 3 days or so.)

Edit to add: baby chicks sleep a lot in the first few days, just like baby people and any other baby animal. Sleeping chicks can look a lot like dead chicks, at least until they wake up and move again--it's one of the ways they make their owners worried

 

[furbabies86]

a) Watch them for 5-10 minutes. Healthy chicks eat and drink frequently while they are awake. If some are eating and drinking, the others will usually learn from them.

b) Gently feel their crops. The crop is where the food goes when they first eat it, before it gets digested. It's on their front at the base of the neck, often a little bit to one side or the other. The crop gets empty and flat if they sleep all night, and gets round and full when they eat a lot. It's common for a tiny chick to have a crop as big and round as a marble, or as big as the end of your thumb, at some times during the day--some people worry that the chick grew a tumor, but it empties out again as they sleep, and then they eat some more.


You might want to put some glass marbles or clean stones in the water dish. The chicks peck at them because they're shiny, get water in their beak, and decide it's good to drink. They also keep chicks from falling asleep in the water and drowning, or squishing each other into the water. (Chicks often do fine with no marbles in the water, but at some point I decided marbles are worth the bother to me for the first 3 days or so.)

Thank you!