Auschook
How is your little one? With a wound like this directly after hatching, I would be very concerned it is a developmental problem...specifically failure of the neural tube to close. This means the spinal canal is malformed and the vertebrae/spinal chord didn't form correctly. Very similar to spinal bifida in people. There is not much you can do if this is the case. Most likely the chick would have neurological problems like paralysis, incontinence, etc, and infection of the central nervous system is likely since it is exposed. Of course it could be a hatching injury such as a shell scrape too, ut I wanted to give you more info so you aren't surprised if he/she goes downhill quickly,
Crossing my fingers it is just a scrape![/quote]
Thanks for asking. It's not doing much better. I think you might be right about it being paralyzed. I don't think it has any feeing in its lower legs or feet. I'm going to wait a bit longer but I doubt it's going to improve.
I am feeling really negative now. I am new to the incubating thing but I've found it enjoyable. I had only incubated my own backyard chickens and had pretty good hatches. I didn't want shipped eggs because I didn't want to get a low hatch so I searched for days to find someone local with the eggs I wanted. I drove to pick them up and out of 12 only the 4 developed. 2 quit early on and 2 made it to lockdown only this one hatched and now we will probably need to cull it. I asked when I picked the eggs up if they were fresh and she assured me they were. When I got home I noticed one egg had a date written on it which was 10 days prior to me picking them up. I thought maybe that was the oldest egg but after the disaster hatch I think they might've been older then that before I got them. 1 even had a detached air cell when I got it home so I'm assuming it was old. I did get eggs shipped after only 4 developed so I have 7 out of 15 still in the incubator due to hatch next Tuesday.
