Polish chicks just want to die

[kycowgirlchick]

No pasty butt. They have a 100 watt bulb in one end of the brooder. They dont huddle under it. One second lively and the next lifeless??

 

[Andora]

You can get a necropsy done on a freshly dead chick for $10 at UK's animal diagnostic lab. They'll give you the results in 7 days! It's kind of a far drive for you, but it might be worth it to solve the problem, if you think it's something other than just wimpy Polish genes.

 

[kycowgirlchick]

So UK does it. I have been trying to find out where to take them. Do you have any more information or phone #s??

 

[thepetpaw]

I raise polish and have not had any prolblems

I just hatched 40 out of 42 eggs that set...one chick died while peeping and one died overnight...so out of 42 eggs i have 39 chicks alive and well.... I keep mine in the incubator for 3 days then take them out and put them in the brooder....I watch them carefully in the brooder beacuse of the summer - I dont keep it at the normal 98 degrees - I have been dkeeping them at about 90 because the temps are so high outside...I give them chick starter from day 2 - I sprinkle it in the bottom of the incubator the day after they hatch then give them water on the third day....on day four I put them in the brooder....

 

[Andora]

If you go here...
http://www.lddc.uky.edu/links.asp

And look on the left hand side of the page, all the info is there. (Ignore the links on the body of the page, not important...)

The diagnostic lab isn't down town with the rest of UK. It's off of New Circle Rd. over by Newtown Pike and Nandino, near where that Marriot Griffin Gate hotel is. I had trouble finding it when I went!

I just took a freshly dead chicken, went to the secretary desk, filled out a one page info sheet, and handed them $10 and the dead bird. (They also told me they could put the bird down for me, but she died on the way there.) After about a week they mailed me extremely detailed info about what they found with a number to call if I had any questions.

There are also two professors at UK that you can call who love to talk about avian illnesses. I called them and asked a million questions about the diseases my birds had and about disinfecting. I can't for the life of me remember their names at the moment though! I would know them if I heard them...

 

[Darchangel Farm]

I just added Polish to my flock last year and
am having a terrible time keeping my polish chicks alive,as so many of you say one day they are fine next they drop over dead ,it is so disheartening...I am having the most trouble with silvers and tolbunts...nothing I do seems to help I hatched 19 and all but one has died...I have over 600 chickens and have kept chickens for fifty years none of my other chicks do this.How on earth do Polish breeders get their chicks to survive?

 

[GodofPecking]

I have some polish, but my rooster got hit by a car a while ago. He played chicken once too often.

Mine would go broody and hatch a few out. I lost 3 to a feral cat. One still lives a long life.

The other one I got originally, a hen, she has also raised a chick with success, but zomg the dad was a naked neck and so is the baby. Hope it is a boy so it can cross back and go polish, cause right now, I can't get pure polish. Live far from more polish boys.

****************One thing I can see a lot of you are forgetting is the required gut bacteria.**************

every part of health in both chickens and astonishingly in humans too is determined by the 95% of cells in our body that do not have human DNA (or chicken for that matter). The chicks always require to eat the sh1t of the flock to get the bacteria working inside them. They cannot digest food without it. As you are all going from hatcher to brooder then you have a recipe for death that would play out as you have written it up. You can raise polish and they do go broody and make good parents in my experience. They just can't take cars head on is what my preliminary studies have found.

 

[Jimmybeam01]

Pretty upsetting isn’t it? I been trying to raise golden laced polish birds for 3 years now. Order like 3 at a time each batch of birds I get. Two left now out of the 6 I got. Wish there was someone in wi that I could get some quality from. But unsure at this point if it’s quality. Or just hard to raise. Almost like a person should get some and just put them in the house right next to your bed so you can keep your eyes on them at all times

 

[FoxyDragon]

Same issue for me started with 4 now I'm down to one was hard enough that it was shipped eggs so only the 4 of 15 eggs even hatched.