My chicks are now 8 days old and I have 1 light brown leghorn that was small to begin with but has been doing ok. Tonight she started acting strange - not moving alot, breathing hard at times and the others were running over her. No pasty butt - I check them several times a day.She eats and drinks but it takes effort - almost like a baby with a heart defect (peds nurse here guys). The brooder is at 85-90 and her temp felt fine. Since the others were running over her I separated her out - Should I have done this? Any advice?
I hope someone more knowledgeable will answer this, but in the meantime, if it was me, I would separate the chick as you did, and make sure the temps stay good... maybe closer to 95°F. It doesn't sound good, but separating her will help keep the others safe if it turns out to be contagious, and will allow her some peace and quiet to rest if it's not. Chicks can be trampled to death by their siblings very easily. I lost one today to just that. I would be hesitant to add antibiotics this early, but perhaps some vitamins in the water will help. I'm sorry your baby is sick... sometimes it happens despite our best efforts. I hope she mends for you. :aww
From what I know, it would be fine to give her the antibiotic Aeromycin or Terramycin powder in her water to see if they would help. I and I believe others have used those for chicks without ill effects. Best wishes!
Best of luck. Sounds like failure to thrive since the chick is still so young. Many things can go wrong in a chick. Vitamins and electrolytes may help out, but I would not give antibiotics without a confirmed infection/injury. As a nurse, I am sure you know why.
Sometimes you can get weak chicks to survive by enticing them to eat more. I have nursed runts with the same symptoms by mixing oatmeal and chick start into a bottle cap with warm water. They are tempted to eat wet/floating feed. I usually pick a small pal to keep the weak one company and to add some competition at the food -it seems to help. Hope your baby perks up. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. You're doing the right things to give it a good chance.
I would seperate her and put a little stuffed animal in there with her, give her something for extra warmth and try to oax some good stuff in her. Electrolytes, some yogurt with crumbles mixed in it, applesauce with crumbles. Anything that she will eat with her crumbles. Good luck but she may not be meant to stay here with you.
Giving a good quality live-culture plain yogurt (sprinkle the starter on top of it is a very good idea. As soon as you see a chick that is smaller and such, one that is perhaps being bullied (or less able) to to feed and drink then I suggest you concentrate the nutrition and separate them (perhaps with a buddy or two which is not aggressive in character) as they will often become weaker with time and get sick. You can concentrate the nutrition with some baby parrot handfeeding formula (a powder you mix with water which can be found at the petstore) ...mix this with their starter. You can also give them a drop or two of polyvisol enfamil if showing more severe symptoms up to three drops a day for a week and then taper off the next as malabsorption of nutrients is often a problem with failure-to-thrive chicks.
Thanks for all the good advice i tried most of it but she was just too weak - she died this morning - im sooo sad
