No Nonsense, chickens are livestock, advise. Tell me like it is.

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I did the same the early part of summer, when I had to dig post holes for the chicken run. This darn Texas clay soil! I had a 1 gal milk jug full of water, dug as far as I could, poured in some water, went to the next hole, did the same, after the 8th hole, I went back to the first hole & it was ready to remove more dirt.

Will see this spring it I have to do this process for the posts I need to dig for the veggie garden.
 
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I thought of asking this question on the Incubating and hatching chicks forum but I want a no nonsense answer. What would cause a chick to form upside down in the egg? I did not incubate it that way and the air cell was where it was supposed to be. I've hatched a lot of eggs and always do a eggtopsy on any that don't hatch. I have not heard of this before. Thanks.
 
I doubt you can get a definitive answer on this thread or any other.At first, I think I was misunderstanding what you're saying here the way you wrote it, but I may have it now. You incubated an egg, chick formed away from the aircell, upside down. Nutrition may have a part in it. Before incubating, you usually should up nutrition of the parent stock to a breeders' feed. Happened in one batch of Orps I incubated in several eggs. After that, upping the feed to a Game Bird Breeder feed for a few weeks before collecting eggs to hatch, it didn't happen again. You can't be 100% sure in one particular case that nutrition was the culprit. There aren't always answers to this type questions, just "maybe" answers.


ETA: when you said you didn't incubate it that way, it sounded like you saw the chick upside down, so you didn't incubate the egg, which confused me. You meant you didn't incubate it with pointy end up, right?
 
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When the egg didn't hatch I very carefully did an eggtopsy to see if I could find anything abnormal. That is what I found. A perfectly formed chick completely upside down in the egg. There would have been no way it could have pipped in this position because the feet and the tissue mass with a partially absorbed yolk sack was right under the intact air cell and the head tucked under the wing was at the small end of the egg. I do eggtopsies on all the eggs that don't hatch and this was the first time I have seen this anomaly.
 
The only time I saw this multiple times in a group of chicks, was when I didn't up their nutrition before collection eggs. Now, that is not always the cause, because on rare occasions, one will happen that way with no discernible rhyme or reason to it. You'll never find the reason for every malfunction during incubation. Just keep nutritional levels high when you are going to be incubating to mitigate the risk of malfunction. Sometimes, it's something during incubation itself, though again, not way to be 100% sure there, either.

If these were shipped eggs, that affects many things as well. When I incubate shipped eggs, that is the only time I get chicks with innards on the outside, a very unfortunate malfunction indeed.
 
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Thanks all for your answers. Since this is the only time this has happened in many hatches. I can only assume that I should have waited to incubate the eggs from this pullet until she was a little older. I'll know better next time. Nutrition wise I feed Dumor chick starter 20% until age 7 weeks. Then they get Neutrena All Flock 18% and add oyster shell or egg shells on the side. Once a day they get a treat of 1/3 scratch, 1/3 wild bird seed and 1/3 BOSS. I have over 70 chickens at various ages and find this works for me. Today one of my Leghorns has gone BROODY again. I thought this was breed out of them. Go figure.
 

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