Not an injury; 'Tag' on chick's jaw.

[aart]

Whoa.....that's a great pic!
Makes me think.... WhiteFang!! after the Jack London novel,
and a game we played with my dog.

I figured it had a blood supply, or it wouldn't have grown, and I was afraid it might break and bleed. Glad you caught it. We need an 'after' pic.
Sounds like the 'shell' was too weak to stand up, or maybe it's attachment.
Either way, it wasn't meant to be, so not surprised it 'failed'.
How would you cauterize?

 

[Zinjifrah]

Whoa.....that's a great pic!
Makes me think.... WhiteFang!! after the Jack London novel,
and a game we played with my dog.

I figured it had a blood supply, or it wouldn't have grown, and I was afraid it might break and bleed. Glad you caught it. We need an 'after' pic.
Sounds like the 'shell' was too weak to stand up, or maybe it's attachment.
Either way, it wasn't meant to be, so not surprised it 'failed'.
How would you cauterize?

I didn't want to stress the chick out any more than it already was - it was NOT happy about having blood washed off it, or wrapped up on its back while I stopped the bleeding! I'll get an 'after' photo tomorrow morning, when it's still reasonably tolerable outside. If I have to cauterize, I'd try trimming it close to the skin, disinfect, then use a sterilized soldering iron to seal the stump off. However, more likely, I'll take it to a vet that passes through this area and have her do it. She's good about letting me help, rather than assuming I'll freak out at seeing my animals worked on - especially since I had to tell her how to treat my snake when it got a respiratory infection. Heh!

 

[Zinjifrah]

A day late, but suffice to say that tomorrow was not a good day, from start to finish. I may have lost all of my Lavender Ameraucana eggs, due to the AC in the house dying while I was gone for most of the day. It was an oven when I got home, hotter inside than out, and outside was around 100 F. I'm just lucky it didn't kill my snakes, cats, dogs, and fish.

Photo from today. Unfortunately it's not clear, but it should show well enough; the chick was unhappy about being held still, and the camera was not cooperating. This is the best out of a dozen or so attempts.

Unrelated, a bit of chick spam for your viewing pleasure. Three weeks old as of Wednesday, fully integrated into the rest of the birds, out of any supplemental heat and sleeping in a box inside the coop at night. They still have an 'escape' area, which they are inside in this photo, in a dog-pile spontaneous nap. The tagged chick is in the front, using the water dish as a pillow;


I put out some chopped hard-boiled egg for everyone, particularly the pullet getting close to POL, and the chicks converged on it after everyone else was done. Tagged chick is on the left;


This is the 'twin' (Similar chick, similar egg, not from the same egg) to the tagged chick, presumably from an egg laid by the same hen. It's the smallest of the eight, and was the weakest at first, but is just as vigorous as the rest now after supplementing their water with vitamin powder for the first couple weeks. It can be seen in the center of the photo above, as well;

 

[Zinjifrah]

Four weeks old.

Things are not going great here, but the tagged chick is thriving. One of the others - the EE/Cochin mix - hurt herself, and still can't walk on the leg. The diagnosis was a sprained hock, and treatment is rest and isolation, but I suspect the may have broken some ribs, as well, or something. She's eating, drinking, hobbling around, but the leg doesn't work right. She's in the chick pen, where nobody can pick on her, but they can all still see her and she the rest.

Tagged chick I had to grab a quick photo of;

The tag is thicker at the base, and getting dark coloration in it. The chick is an absurd amount of fluffy feathers with a tiny fuzzy head. I'll probably have to cut updates back to once a week from now on.

Progression;

Egg set 6-6-18, Hatched 6-27-18.

6-27-18: 33 grams.
6-30-18: 38 grams. Five gram gain.
7-04-18: 54 grams. Sixteen gram gain.
7-07-18: 68 grams. Fourteen gram gain.
7-10-18: 81 grams. Thirteen gram gain.
7-14-18: 113 grams. Thirty two gram gain.
7-18-18: 140 grams. Twenty seven gram gain.
7-25-18: 223 grams. Eighty three gram gain. Kaboom.

In other news, I thought all of my bantam Lavender Ameraucana eggs had died in two instances of AC failure while I was gone, the first of which was due to a power outage, the second of which took place when the AC died. On both instances, it was over 100 F outside, and was considerably hotter inside, for an unknown length of time.

However, the broken egg that I set anyway - quarter inch crater in the middle of the egg, cracks radiating halfway around the egg in both directions - is in the process of unzipping, and a second egg has started unzipping. At least two alive. Better than I expected, out of thirty eggs, given the complications.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

So cute!

I'm sorry to hear about your EE/Cochin, I hope she recovers soon.

 

[Zinjifrah]

So cute!

I'm sorry to hear about your EE/Cochin, I hope she recovers soon.

Thank you. She screams if I pick her up - which is why I'm thinking she may have some broken ribs - but she's up and hobbling around, and today she's using the injured foot, just a little. Yesterday it was curled up and she seemed to have no mobility in it. I'm hoping for a full recovery, of course, but as long as she heals up well enough to grow and thrive, I'll be content.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Thank you. She screams if I pick her up - which is why I'm thinking she may have some broken ribs - but she's up and hobbling around, and today she's using the injured foot, just a little. Yesterday it was curled up and she seemed to have no mobility in it. I'm hoping for a full recovery, of course, but as long as she heals up well enough to grow and thrive, I'll be content.

Oh dear! Let's hope everything is just bruised badly and nothing is broken.

 

[WVduckchick]

I think it’s great that you monitored the little tag, but don’t put yourself out to keep measuring it, unless you just want to. It would be awesome to see some monthly pics or every once in a while as she grows.

How many Lav Ams ended up hatching?? Did you tape the cracked egg, or just leave it as it was? Curious about turning thru incubation also, how did you handle it?

 

[Zinjifrah]

I think it’s great that you monitored the little tag, but don’t put yourself out to keep measuring it, unless you just want to. It would be awesome to see some monthly pics or every once in a while as she grows.

How many Lav Ams ended up hatching?? Did you tape the cracked egg, or just leave it as it was? Curious about turning thru incubation also, how did you handle it?

Once a week shouldn't be any trouble - though I'm starting to question whether 'she' isn't a 'he'! I noticed there was a bit of pink on the comb earlier, while I was checking on everyone.

I expected a whopping zero LavAmBan to hatch, after all the trouble with my AC going out. Today is day 21 for the last eight eggs that had any signs of development. Yesterday, two hatched - today, three more have hatched, two eggs are clearly quitters, and one more is in the incubator still working on hatching. I put a safety hole in three of the eggs - two had pipped, but they didn't break through the membrane, so I just opened a hole in the membrane for them. That was enough for them to unzip on their own. The last one hadn't pipped, but I gave it a hole anyway because it was sounding weak. These are from very low altitude, and I'm almost 5 thousand feet elevation.. so it wouldn't surprise me of egg porosity and oxygen level differences played a factor.

The cracked egg had a quarter inch wide indented impact crater when it arrived, and candling revealed radiating cracks from that, with the longest cracks circling the egg about halfway around. It was not leaking, and appeared to have not ruptured the inner membrane, so I used common scotch tape to seal the major cracks in an X pattern, length-wise and width-wise, over that half of the egg, centered on the crater. This was right after a 3% hydrogen peroxide bath. I removed the tape on the evening of day 19, just in case.... and the egg was the second to hatch, on day 20. I rested the egg prior to setting, and turned all the eggs manually. The cracked egg was treated no differently from the rest.

As an aside - I kept humidity right between 35% and 45% during the first ten days, using calibrated hygrometers, then weighed the eggs again. During that time, I'd lost as much weight on ALL of the eggs as I should have for the entire duration of incubation, and that was before the heat spikes when my power was shut off (power company working on the lines) and then again when my AC died. Both happened while I was gone. I boosted humidity to 50-60% for the latter half of incubation, to try and avoid losing too much more moisture prior to hatch. I don't know if that helped in keeping the six that survived alive, or not.

 

[WVduckchick]

Much better result than you anticipated, so that’s excellent! Congrats.
And thanks for the info on the cracked one. Lots of folks use different things, so I’m always interested in things that actually work.