I named her Sunny. She's the only one with a name so far. But she's only just staying about the same and not growing at all. Except for her wings. It's very odd. Her wings have overtaken her body, and she looks more like a house fly. The other Cream Legbar is now much bigger, but has only just begun showing wing feathers, still having mostly just her wing stubs. Could "she" actually be a boy? I thought they could sex Legbars pretty accurately. Sunny has a much lighter head than the other Legbar, too. Anyone know about Legbars?
So. Today I brought in a chick from outside to visit Sunny in her infirmary. It was a happy reunion, and they got along great, they ate together, and sunny actually ate more than she usually does. But the other chick ate most of the food then got restless. She is, after all, an outdoor, run-around-in-lots-of-space chick, and she wanted to get back to it.
After a while I did the reverse. I took Sunny out to the grow-out pen and let her visit with the others. But it didn't work out well. The others ran circles around her. She was too cold, tried to go into the cave to warm up, but didn't want to stay in there alone. The others were plenty comfortable and weren't using the MHP at all since it had climbed into the 70s. So all Sunny did was cry, go into the cave for a minute, then turn right around and come back out. Then back in. All the time chirping rapidly.
So I brought her back inside and she went in to her MHP and glued herself to it, slowly warming up and quieting down.
She's still sick, has no real energy like a chick ought to have, certainly nothing like her mates outside that were tearing round and round the pen practically non-stop. Especially when they happened to "find" a meal worm. And they're rapidly becoming much larger. And yes, LG, cold resistant much like your chicks.
I did offer her some tofu after I brought her back in and after she had warmed up. It was a huge hit, and she thought it was a wonderful treat and ate a tiny bit with a dab of Nutri-drench on it.
By the way, I thought to use some of my cannabis salve (legal in my state) on her little swollen vent, and it's dramatically improved. Nothing else was doing anything, but 24 hours later after the magic salve, her sore butt is much better.
I wonder if I'm the only person who only had to put two chicks under MHP one time each and then never had to do it again with any of them.......I put one chick under with the oldest ones, and the rest followed then went in and out on their own. The second batch, added a week afterwards into the same brooder, saw the older ones going in and just followed right along. The third batch, my Buff Brahmas, I moved one chick under then never had to repeat it.
