Helping Chicks Out of Eggs

Bent toes are common with incubation and low humidity. If you come across this again, you can put a shoe on them to straighten the toes in the first couple days of life while the bones are still soft. It shouldn't cause her any problems, but I would keep an eye for sores from not being able to walk on them properly.

Jody

 

I was taught that if the chick isn't strong enough to get out of the shell it wasn't strong enough to live. When I hatched eggs during high school and failed to follow the advice, the birds always had issues and usually were sacrificed or died very soon after hatching. Of course we were hatching for production and not for "pets".

Jim

 

I've pretty much had the same "luck" as Lazy J when it comes to helping a chick hatch. I've had a couple of successes, but more failures. I always say I'm gonna let mother nature run her course, but it gets really hard when there's one having trouble getting out. I do agree for the most part that if it's not strong enough to make it out it probably won't be strong enough to live....the only thing being that by artificially incubating we're already messing with mother nature.