FunClucks
Crowing
I had this happen in my first hatch. I was pretty upset for the chick, but there was nothing I could do. A very sharp butcher knife and a cutting board took care of it quickly.
How this happens, is something goes wrong when the chick is forming, and all of the intestines don't go inside the chick. Once the chick hatches, if there's a small bit poking out, there may be a small hole in the underside of the chick - if the hole is still open you might be able to gently poke the intestines back an. But the hole closes in less than 10 minutes after hatch. After that point, if there's intestines outside the body, they are cut off from the rest of the intestines, and will turn necrotic and the chick will slowly starve and die. A quick cull is the most humane option.
In this chick's case, there's too many intestines outside the body to poke them back through the hole in the abdomen, so that was never an option here. I tried with my chick and wasn't successful either. It can be very painful for the chick if you try and poke them back in - only try if there's a possibility of success in a very short moment of time, like only a tiny amount sticking out of a relatively large hole that the protruding intestines will fit through.
I'm sharing this info because it helped me to understand what went wrong with my chick, and to have a plan for if it happened again.
In my chick's case, they came out of the largest egg - I'm not sure the auto-turner adequately rotated the egg. Or it could just have been poor genetics from that hen.
Sorry you have to deal with this. This is the awful part of chicken keeping.
How this happens, is something goes wrong when the chick is forming, and all of the intestines don't go inside the chick. Once the chick hatches, if there's a small bit poking out, there may be a small hole in the underside of the chick - if the hole is still open you might be able to gently poke the intestines back an. But the hole closes in less than 10 minutes after hatch. After that point, if there's intestines outside the body, they are cut off from the rest of the intestines, and will turn necrotic and the chick will slowly starve and die. A quick cull is the most humane option.
In this chick's case, there's too many intestines outside the body to poke them back through the hole in the abdomen, so that was never an option here. I tried with my chick and wasn't successful either. It can be very painful for the chick if you try and poke them back in - only try if there's a possibility of success in a very short moment of time, like only a tiny amount sticking out of a relatively large hole that the protruding intestines will fit through.
I'm sharing this info because it helped me to understand what went wrong with my chick, and to have a plan for if it happened again.
In my chick's case, they came out of the largest egg - I'm not sure the auto-turner adequately rotated the egg. Or it could just have been poor genetics from that hen.
Sorry you have to deal with this. This is the awful part of chicken keeping.
