HELPPPP!

[lennyrie]

A teacher I work with is incubating and hatching chicken eggs as a learning project for her class. Two and a half days ago one of the eggs began to hatch. The chick broke a hole in the egg, but since done nothing else! It was pipping and breathing, but it was drying out terribly. The teacher decided to go ahead and break it the rest of the way out. After working for over an hour, she freed the chick. The shell and membrane was adheared to the chick. She used warm water to soak each small piece of shell before tenderly working it free. A couple of hours after being freed, the feathers are actually hard and matted to the chick's body and are not fluffing up. Can the teacher wash the baby chick in order to clean the feathers and cause them to fluff up? Also, it is very weak. I heard that it is stressed because of the trama it suffered and she needs to give it sugar water. is this true? If so, how much and how often? Thanks for any information that I can pass along to her!

 

[patyrdz]

Yes she can give it sugar water. Just put some sugar in the water and dunk its beak in it to show it how to drink. Hopefully it will get the idea. If not keep doing it every 10 minutes or so until it learns.
As far as the washing, you will get many different responses. I am going to tell you what I personally have done. Which is ..I turn on the warm water and hold the chick, and with my finger I wet the chick and get it moist like it would be when it hatched. Rubbing it with the water to wash off all the membrane. Make sure there is no draft, bacause the chick can get chilled. I have done this a few times, and the chick was fine. Good luck.
By the way welcome to BYC!

 

[heritagebirds]

My chicks would start preening themselves and remove the juck making the fluff clump up. If the chick is in a warm place, my borrder is around 100 degree F right after I take them out of the hatcher... They will be weak. One that I have right now needed help to get out of the shell, same story. It has been breathing more quickly and heavily than the other, but I am leaving it in the hatcher until it is pretty steady on its feet. Good luck

 

[lennyrie]

As of this afternoon, "Junior" was still alive and doing better. We "HAD" to bathe the chick, because of the large amount of stuck on and hardened yolk. Since the bath, the chick has started to fluff up some and it is begin to preen itself. She/he is still kind of weak, but is still fighting. Junior is eating a little bit and drinking a little bit of the sugar water. We have him/her isolated from the other two bigger, more robust chicks for fear that they would harm him/her. Is this the right thing to do? Junior is in a seperate box under a warming light and has a stuffed animal to snuggle. Is there anything more we can do for this lil chick... special food, etc.?

 

[kinnip]

Quote:
Yup. Poly-vi-sol infant vitamins (w/o iron) three drops twice a day.