How much vitamin E, B vitamins and Selenium should a 10 day old chick be getting? Help Please!

[Liza728w]

I have a 10 day old micro serama - she had a rough start. She has never taken a bite of food or a drink of water. I've been hand feeding her 5 times a day with kaytee bird feeding formula, save-a-chick electrolytes/vitamins, and I add in a couple dropper fulls of egg yolk to her mixture every day. It took her 5 days to STAND UP right and stop being so lethargic.

She doesn't seem to be able to "see" me sometimes and definitely can't peck the dropper (with her formula in it) with accuracy. When she knows it's feeding time, she looks around EVERYWHERE and pecks at thin air until I align the dropper with her beak and get her to settle down. It seems like this is Avian Encephalomalacia - which is a vitamin E deficiency. Thoughts?


What are the vitamin requirements for a 10 day old serama chick? I want to make sure she is getting everything she needs, and how much vitamin e/selenium/b vitamins to be giving her! I am a little bit lost on what to do.

 

[azygous]

It sounds like your chick could be blind. Have you tried sprinkling some dry chick feed on the brooder floor and audibly pecking at it with your finger nail to simulate a hen instructing a new chick where to find food? Wait until the chick is hungry again, and try that and see what happens. Spend a few minutes with this exercise. You may be able to train the chick to seek its food in a specific location, and it will then be able to eat on its own. Same with its water, but please make the water dish chick drown proof by putting rocks or marbles in the water.

If you are concerned the chick is deficient in vitamin E, give it the oil directly from the E capsule. Selenium can be addressed with feeding minced boiled egg. PoultryNutri-drench in the water at one-fourth teaspoon to one quart water will give the chick the vitamin boost it needs. If you can train the chick to seek its food on the floor, the chick feed will supply all the other vitamins and nutrients it requires.

 

[Liza728w]

It sounds like your chick could be blind. Have you tried sprinkling some dry chick feed on the brooder floor and audibly pecking at it with your finger nail to simulate a hen instructing a new chick where to find food? Wait until the chick is hungry again, and try that and see what happens. Spend a few minutes with this exercise. You may be able to train the chick to seek its food in a specific location, and it will then be able to eat on its own. Same with its water, but please make the water dish chick drown proof by putting rocks or marbles in the water.

If you are concerned the chick is deficient in vitamin E, give it the oil directly from the E capsule. Selenium can be addressed with feeding minced boiled egg. PoultryNutri-drench in the water at one-fourth teaspoon to one quart water will give the chick the vitamin boost it needs. If you can train the chick to seek its food on the floor, the chick feed will supply all the other vitamins and nutrients it requires.

She will come to me when I move my hand away from her - and heads straight for it to snuggle. I don't believe she is blind, at least not fully. I have been stumped on what is going on with her. She does not even look at the floor, or pick at anything on the ground. In all of her 10 days of life she has pecked the floor near the food ONCE. She has weird head movements - when she looks around sometimes her head will very slowly turn in one direction until she looks somewhere else. She doesn't have classic symptoms of wry neck but I'm wondering if SOMETHING like that is going on inside her body. She also used to never lay down - she would jet her legs out in front of her and stretch them all the way out. She used to constantly want to be under something with her legs like that. Luckily now she will actually lay down.

 

[Weeg]

Can you try to test her? When I tested one of my hens for bindles because of an eye injury, I took my hand and held her facing me. Then, I basically did a fling test. Brought my hand towards her eye, and stopped before I actually hit her. Like I pretended to hit her, but really situ region to see if she could see my hand to flinch away.

I really down know how accurate this is, haha, but it may give you an idea on who she sees if she flinches, or doesn't.
She may run towards your hand because she can feel body heat, not because she can see it.

 

[azygous]

Treat for wry neck even though the chick doesn't have 'classic" symptoms. Wry neck can present in many different ways. The E usually works pretty quickly. You need the concentrated E from a 400iu capsule. Other multivitamins don't contain nearly enough for the job.

Did you try the pecking exercise? Chicks have the instinct to hear the pecking sound and associate it with food finding. I have a blind thirteen-year old hen, and she does fine eating when I "peck" at her food dish to "show" her where it is and it also signals to her I just put something into it.

An effort must be made to make your chick self sufficient unless you wish to be hand feeding it for the next six to eight years.

 

[Liza728w]

Treat for wry neck even though the chick doesn't have 'classic" symptoms. Wry neck can present in many different ways. The E usually works pretty quickly. You need the concentrated E from a 400iu capsule. Other multivitamins don't contain nearly enough for the job.

Did you try the pecking exercise? Chicks have the instinct to hear the pecking sound and associate it with food finding. I have a blind thirteen-year old hen, and she does fine eating when I "peck" at her food dish to "show" her where it is and it also signals to her I just put something into it.

An effort must be made to make your chick self sufficient unless you wish to be hand feeding it for the next six to eight years.

Yep I did try the pecking method multiple times. No recognition whatsoever. She used to walk backwards and stretch her feet out - this was the only way she'd sleep. She had other odd tendencies too, like only ever wanting to be under heat and not standing up right. She is wobbly too. She stopped walking backwards about 5 days ago and now walks like a normal chick.

I just fed her - and she was walking in circles. This was alarming... There has to be something wrong.

Usually, her feedings are:

Kaytee handfeeding formula (crushed chick feed will clog up my syringe/dropper) and a dropper of egg yolk all mixed up together with save-a-chick vitamin/electrolyte water. I feed her every 2.5-3 hours every day until her crop is full.

How much vitamin E should she be ingesting daily? There is vitamin E in the save-a-chick but maybe not enough. I can't find an exact dosage anywhere.

I don't want to hand feed her forever. It is exhausting. She just will not recognize food or water at ALL or even explore when she's out with me. I desperately want to make her better! I hand feed her to keep her alive. I added vitamins to help make sure she was getting what she needs in hopes she would improve- which she has but she is still not well.

 

[azygous]

It does sound like a form of wry neck (torticolis). Get the vitamin E gel caps 400iu. Break one open and give her the entire contents each day. That's one gel cap per day. That's the dosage for a baby chick or an adult chicken. You can put it into her food or into a soft boiled egg. But get the entire dose into her each day. If this is due to a vitamin E deficiency, you will see rapid results. If this is a genetic nervous system defect, then you'll know if there is no improvement.

 

[Liza728w]

It does sound like a form of wry neck (torticolis). Get the vitamin E gel caps 400iu. Break one open and give her the entire contents each day. That's one gel cap per day. That's the dosage for a baby chick or an adult chicken. You can put it into her food or into a soft boiled egg. But get the entire dose into her each day. If this is due to a vitamin E deficiency, you will see rapid results. If this is a genetic nervous system defect, then you'll know if there is no improvement.

I will go get it tonight, thank you. Should I continue with the vitamin water along with the vitamin E? So, feeding formula + egg yolk + vitamin E + vitamin water?

 

[azygous]

Yes, that would be good.

 

[Hayliem01]

It does sound like a form of wry neck (torticolis). Get the vitamin E gel caps 400iu. Break one open and give her the entire contents each day. That's one gel cap per day. That's the dosage for a baby chick or an adult chicken. You can put it into her food or into a soft boiled egg. But get the entire dose into her each day. If this is due to a vitamin E deficiency, you will see rapid results. If this is a genetic nervous system defect, then you'll know if there is no improvement.

The vitamin E human gel capsule? This works on a 10 day old? What about selenium do i get a gel form pill of that and give that to them as well? Or something else? My duckling looks like it has a form of wry neck and I’m trying to correct it as quickly as possible there currently youngest is 8 oldest is 10 days old