Hi all! This is my second time hatching eggs and despite a nasty spike in temperature during week 2, I've got a good number of little peeps running around now. It was an early hatch, so there's still some eggs that have yet to do much, but that's not the reason I'm posting this!
I use a Little Giant incubator with a circulation fan kit from Incubator Warehouse. At around midnight last night I had a rather large Copper Marans chick hatch, and in his infantile stumbling about the incubator, he managed to prop himself up on an unhatched egg and THWONK!! his head went right into the exposed bottom part of the fan!!! I was horrified! I got the little guy out and threw some corn starch (in lieu of styptic powder) on the wound to stop the bleeding (which, honestly, wasn't much, but I wanted to cover my bases). He has a nice chewed up section of skin on the top of his head, above the comb. So far, he has been acting as a normal, less-than-a-day-old chick should: moving around a little on wobbly legs, sleeping a LOT, and otherwise being a small, fluffy, slightly squishy little potato.
I'm concerned about an infection of the cut, or anything else that may happen in this kind of a situation! I've never heard of this happening before (and I DID google it!) and I am, admittedly, a novice with hatching chicks. I know the fan is just a computer fan, but it seemed to be high enough not to be a danger, so I didn't even think about putting a fan guard on it.
Thoughts??
I use a Little Giant incubator with a circulation fan kit from Incubator Warehouse. At around midnight last night I had a rather large Copper Marans chick hatch, and in his infantile stumbling about the incubator, he managed to prop himself up on an unhatched egg and THWONK!! his head went right into the exposed bottom part of the fan!!! I was horrified! I got the little guy out and threw some corn starch (in lieu of styptic powder) on the wound to stop the bleeding (which, honestly, wasn't much, but I wanted to cover my bases). He has a nice chewed up section of skin on the top of his head, above the comb. So far, he has been acting as a normal, less-than-a-day-old chick should: moving around a little on wobbly legs, sleeping a LOT, and otherwise being a small, fluffy, slightly squishy little potato.
I'm concerned about an infection of the cut, or anything else that may happen in this kind of a situation! I've never heard of this happening before (and I DID google it!) and I am, admittedly, a novice with hatching chicks. I know the fan is just a computer fan, but it seemed to be high enough not to be a danger, so I didn't even think about putting a fan guard on it.
Thoughts??
