Help. What is wrong with my chicks?

[aart]

I rigged up a ceramic emitter in my lamp. It’s on the right side of the picture but I’ve since resituated it a little better and they seem to have figured it out! I also turned the room up to 75.

Wow, it seems far away.
Should I re-up my broken record about checking the temp on the floor?

 

[BluebirdHomestead]

Wow, it seems far away.
Should I re-up my broken record about checking the temp on the floor?

I found a way to get it closer, just didn’t get a pic. Involved taking that guard thing off the lamp and cutting some cardboard lower to get the lamp closer. And it’s 80 on the floor.

 

[BluebirdHomestead]

I just noticed the little hand in the picture pointing to the chicks! That's cute, the toddler seems excited for the chicks' new home too!

Haha yes she was an awesome “helper” this morning while I set everything up. Nothing like juggling a two year old, wire cutters, zip ties and hardware cloth!

 

[ValerieJ]

I think you're incredible handling all this chick stress and a 2 year old to boot!

 

[GodofPecking]

...Giving them concentrated droppings I would not do. The idea is to expose them gradually, not give them a ton all at once. Poopy water is NOT healthy for baby chicks. Scratching around, pecking, and dustbathing in soil IS. Poopy water is not healthy for anybody or any thing.

when you say it's bad, do you mean you don't like it or have you found research that says its detrimental ?

I've never seen research that says poopy water is anything but essential to chicks. Perhaps it's more like some combination of reading about food being an infection vector that gives us all a gut feeling that it's bad, when scientifically and logically it's not.

For chicks, eating poop is compulsory for life, no eat means dead. Check my working :

Chickens require gut flora, they are dead without it.
That gut flora cannot pass through the shell of the egg during incubation.
There is no gut prior to the shell being sealed, so it goes in after hatching.
Gut flora will live in the digestive tract, there are two main openings to that tract and it has to go into at least one of them.

Am I missing anything, research to suggest a particular dosage of beneficial gut flora is detrimental ? I think it may be something people in general need to think about carefully, but once thats done, yeah, it sounds strange, but it's strange but true.

Now if you want really gross, I was reading some research that mention people, and how our guts get bugs and how that starts during birth, because of where your mouth is during birth. Erm, well, gross but true.

 

[GodofPecking]

Haha yes she was an awesome “helper” this morning while I set everything up. Nothing like juggling a two year old, wire cutters, zip ties and hardware cloth!

There is a youtube video of that I think his name was marty coffee ? cant remember but he threw them all in the air and took a bite out of one of them each couple of throws. Kind of remember it didn't end well. But that's showbiz.

 

[Pennys Mama]

I never in my wildest dreams would've dreamed of using the IGNORE button. I think it's time I locate it again. Imho, good grief.
Hope your young'uns are doing well this morning?

 

[GodofPecking]

I found it, but he's not juggling a two year old, wire cutters, zip ties and hardware cloth and he's not juggling a watermelon and a chainsaw as I first thought, he's juggling a chainsaw and kittens I think, or something like that. He was pretty normal because everyone was a bit weird back then.

 

[ValerieJ]

when you say it's bad, do you mean you don't like it or have you found research that says its detrimental ?

I've never seen research that says poopy water is anything but essential to chicks. Perhaps it's more like some combination of reading about food being an infection vector that gives us all a gut feeling that it's bad, when scientifically and logically it's not.

For chicks, eating poop is compulsory for life, no eat means dead. Check my working :

Chickens require gut flora, they are dead without it.
That gut flora cannot pass through the shell of the egg during incubation.
There is no gut prior to the shell being sealed, so it goes in after hatching.
Gut flora will live in the digestive tract, there are two main openings to that tract and it has to go into at least one of them.

Am I missing anything, research to suggest a particular dosage of beneficial gut flora is detrimental ? I think it may be something people in general need to think about carefully, but once thats done, yeah, it sounds strange, but it's strange but true.

Now if you want really gross, I was reading some research that mention people, and how our guts get bugs and how that starts during birth, because of where your mouth is during birth. Erm, well, gross but true.

I've never seen any research that says feeding chicken poo to your chicks is beneficial. Can you provide a link to such research?

 

[GodofPecking]

Sure, right after you provide yours I'll do that.

In the meantime this is nice

Chickens for commercial production are hatched in a clean environment, and unlike all other farm animals, chickens will never get into contact with adult birds to become colonized by the healthy microflora of adults. Colonization of mucosal surfaces in newly hatched chickens is therefore a matter of coincidence, and if a bacterial pathogen appears in the environment, the sterile intestinal tract of a newly hatched chicken represents an empty ecological niche enabling such a pathogen essentially unrestricted multiplication followed by prolonged colonization. This is the reason why the use of competitive exclusion (CE) products enabling early rapid colonization of chickens with healthy adult gut microbiota has been successfully tested in poultry (18, 20). The positive effect of CE products has been explained by the ability of bacteria present in these products to compete directly with pathogens and also to stimulate maturation of the gut immune system of newly hatched chickens.Chickens for commercial production are hatched in a clean environment, and unlike all other farm animals, chickens will never get into contact with adult birds to become colonized by the healthy microflora of adults. Colonization of mucosal surfaces in newly hatched chickens is therefore a matter of coincidence, and if a bacterial pathogen appears in the environment, the sterile intestinal tract of a newly hatched chicken represents an empty ecological niche enabling such a pathogen essentially unrestricted multiplication followed by prolonged colonization. This is the reason why the use of competitive exclusion (CE) products enabling early rapid colonization of chickens with healthy adult gut microbiota has been successfully tested in poultry (18, 20). The positive effect of CE products has been explained by the ability of bacteria present in these products to compete directly with pathogens and also to stimulate maturation of the gut immune system of newly hatched chickens.​

there was some research where they chopped up feral chickens guts and fed it to the test birds to populate their guts with the flora required, but I don't think that is the nicest way to do it, I'll just stick to the old poopy water trick.