I never would have agreed with this before my recent experience hatching. My chicks were scheduled to hatch Friday into Saturday but due to incubator issues, they started pipping and hatching Saturday into Sunday (Easter). By Sunday night, one that had been rocking quite a bit that morning was quiet...nothing. I candled it Sunday night and saw an internal pip. Figured I'd give it an artificial hole so that it could do it's thing during the night. But Monday morning, still nothing. All the other eggs had hatched the day prior so I knew something was up. It was definitely trying...had made a small amount of progress expanding hole in one spot but no further zipping. By almost noon the next day, it's peeps were growing fainter and it was moving less so I broke away some more shell so that it could finish the job. It took another half hour to get out and I could see as it tried that one leg wasn't being used much. Once it was out, I waited for it to right itself but it couldn't...20 minutes went by and I finally grabbed it to inspect under light in brooder. Rotated femur and slipped tendon. I'm relatively new to chickens so it took some time for me to really get an idea of what I was dealing with...in the meantime, I followed advice from more experienced chicken people to place in teacup to strengthen leg and hobble...but now in hindsight, I realized that only increased the poor little chick's pain :'( Once I figured out what I was really dealing with, I tried correcting the slipped tendon but it was hard to feel and from what I read, the rotated femur would compromise the joint in such a way that it might never fit....and the hock could rupture down the road. I was so sad to have to dispatch the sweet little thing and I couldn't help but think that if I had left the egg alone, it might have died more peacefully as oxygen slowly ran out. It's so hard to commit to the "I will never again intervene....." but right now, I think that that's the most humane way to go. I don't breed purebreds....our chicks we hatch are just barnyard mixes...some layers, some for meat and no real plan until we get our homestead. So I'm not worried about breeding for strength at the moment but I don't ever want to go through that experience again. For now, I think in the future, I'll let Nature take it's course and trust it's for the best. That sounds horrible...and I might go back on my word depending on the situation...but in this case, Nature would have been kinder than my attempts to help were
