We recently became chicken parents… started out with 4 4 week old Black Australorp (straight run) chicks from our TSC store…. Originally they were for my 10yr old daughter to raise, but my boyfriend is going through the whole chicken math thing and well now we have 16 young chicks 
My boyfriend is a sucker when it comes to discounts, so he decided to buy all 12 chicks that our RK store had marked down to a 1$…. They were older chicks, unsure of the age or even breed, because they had them all in the same bin discounted down, but they were pretty much fully feathered and are just a tad smaller than our now 6 1/2 week old Black Australorp “Vultures” (they act and look like lil vultures during feeding time but we still love them) so I’m going to guess maybe 4 weeks old
Last night we were in the barn and coop working and I noticed 3 of the new chicks seemed distant from the others- like they just stood in one spot, feathers seemed a bit poofed and didn’t mingle or walk around like all the others… I noticed some poo that did look suspicious like it had blood in it (I use to be in nursing so I’m always randomly looking at poo from all the animals we have because it can really tell us if one is sick well before any other major symptoms develop like in humans)… anyways, I’m just not sure which one had the poo, so I started googling chicken poo pics and am thinking at least one of them may have the cocci illness, especially with the way they are acting….
Now my question for this is…. Do I treat them all or just isolate the 3 that are acting that way and treat them?…If it’s not cocci, could it be something else?
My next question
One of the chicks he got, seems handicapped… possible spraddle splayed leg, it doesn’t seem broken and is functional and can move it, has normal color, feels warm (as in, it has blood flow/circulation) not a dead limb, the leg seems to drag behind him- like it’s facing behind and under his tail feathers…. He hobbles around with it, mainly using his good leg and belly to scoot around the coop, he eats and drinks normally though- seems very full of life and determined to survive….
Is there anything that I can do to possibly help him get around better? I’ve looked at the different bracing ideas for spraddle/splayed legs but they all seem like it’s for mainly newly hatched chicks and not for ones of his approx age…
Sorry for the long post and
Thank you for any and all advice
My boyfriend is a sucker when it comes to discounts, so he decided to buy all 12 chicks that our RK store had marked down to a 1$…. They were older chicks, unsure of the age or even breed, because they had them all in the same bin discounted down, but they were pretty much fully feathered and are just a tad smaller than our now 6 1/2 week old Black Australorp “Vultures” (they act and look like lil vultures during feeding time but we still love them) so I’m going to guess maybe 4 weeks old
Last night we were in the barn and coop working and I noticed 3 of the new chicks seemed distant from the others- like they just stood in one spot, feathers seemed a bit poofed and didn’t mingle or walk around like all the others… I noticed some poo that did look suspicious like it had blood in it (I use to be in nursing so I’m always randomly looking at poo from all the animals we have because it can really tell us if one is sick well before any other major symptoms develop like in humans)… anyways, I’m just not sure which one had the poo, so I started googling chicken poo pics and am thinking at least one of them may have the cocci illness, especially with the way they are acting….
Now my question for this is…. Do I treat them all or just isolate the 3 that are acting that way and treat them?…If it’s not cocci, could it be something else?
My next question
One of the chicks he got, seems handicapped… possible spraddle splayed leg, it doesn’t seem broken and is functional and can move it, has normal color, feels warm (as in, it has blood flow/circulation) not a dead limb, the leg seems to drag behind him- like it’s facing behind and under his tail feathers…. He hobbles around with it, mainly using his good leg and belly to scoot around the coop, he eats and drinks normally though- seems very full of life and determined to survive….
Is there anything that I can do to possibly help him get around better? I’ve looked at the different bracing ideas for spraddle/splayed legs but they all seem like it’s for mainly newly hatched chicks and not for ones of his approx age…
Sorry for the long post and
Thank you for any and all advice
