Help with new hatchling...?

[cassandralynn]

Hello! I just had our first 7 chicks hatch! 6 are healthy and look great. One though is very, very sticky, has a hard time moving and had a lot of discharge come out of his bottom right after hatching. He doesn't look as vibrant as the others and came out of a rather large shell which the farmer thought could have been a double-yolker.

The chick is alive and cheeping, I separated him from the others in another brooder, under warmth. He's sooo crusted (he hatched about 9 hours ago and barely has fluffed...).


Wondering if anyone has any thoughts?

Should I try to get the sticky stuff off him somehow?

Not sure what to do.

Thanks!

Cass

 

[Ridgerunner]

Chicks hatched from unusually small or unusually large eggs tend to have hatching problems. If that really was a double yolker, you were lucky to get a chick. Usually they don’t make it but that might explain the “discharge” and the gunk on the down. Usually you get two chicks developing and there is just not enough room for both of them so none make it. But maybe you only had one chick develop so there was an extra yolk floating around. Possibly not all the white was used up either which could gunk the down. That stuff is like glue when it dries.

One of the last things a chick does before it hatches is absorb the yolk. It may be that a second yolk caused a lot of problems with that, or it may be that the chick just didn’t full absorb the yolk before it hatched. That sometimes happens. In either case I’d be very careful about bursting that yolk if it is there. Just handle it as little as you can.

I once had a chick gunked down like that. It was shrink-wrapped it and I helped it hatch after the rest of the hatch was over. When it dried the down was like you describe but it was a totally formed healthy chick otherwise. I dipped it in warm (about 100 degree) water to rinse it off which helped some, but it still had a lot of down glued down. I put it back in the incubator to dry off. You don’t want it getting a chill. I put those chicks with a broody hen to raise. She accepted that chick and the other did not bother it. It took about a week but the down finally cleared up. After that, I could not tell that chick from the others.

My real concern is not the gunk but the discharge. If it has not absorbed the yolk by now it is probably in big trouble but I really don’t know what is going on with that. As long as the dried gunk is not preventing the chick from moving properly, it should not be a big problem, it will wear off, but it sure looks bad. As long as you don’t let the chick get a chill, rinsing it off won’t hurt it, maybe even use a bit of baby shampoo.

Good luck with it. That is stressful.