Quail with half a beak?

[PinkFlamingoFrm]

I am having terrible luck with this hatch! First the power went out and messed up eggs & today, one of the little button quail had hatched, and it found its way under the wire of the incubator, im still not sure how he did it, but i was trying to get him out, because I didnt want him to drown in the water wells down there.. well when I was being extra careful not to disturb the eggs, i accidently flung the thermometer up in the air & it came down and cracked an egg. The egg started bleeding & the top cracked off pretty much. so much was pulled off that I could see the chick inside. Im assuming that the chick wouldnt have been able to hatch on its own because it only has the bottom part of its beak. Now, I have a chick, with only the bottom part of its beak.. Ive never seen this before & Im not quite sure what to do. Im assuming everyones going to say to "cull it" but Im not sure that I can do that. Does he have any chance of surviving on his own? I will try to update with a picture shortly.

 

[chooks4life]

It's a little unclear how you can see the beak. Did the membrane get broken? Did you hatch the bird? If it's hatched, the advice given would be totally different than if we're talking about a chick in a busted egg, which I assume would die without help.

If it does hatch I assume it will be special needs and probably not live despite special care. If its beak had been cut off, it would likely regrow, but since it's failed to grow, there's no reason to assume it will... Unless someone has experience with this defect in quail. I would assume culling is kindest. If it only has the lower mandible, it can't peck and its tongue would likely shrivel and become useless, maybe even die off, and its nasal and mucosal membranes in that area would dry up. So it couldn't drink or eat without your help. It couldn't preen itself either.

If you've bred your quail too close to any vaccines, meds, or similar, you should review this to see if the defect is something caused by an accident or mistake; if you've followed all the withholding guidelines, maybe you have defective stock, and need to weed them out of your flock.

Best wishes.

 

[PinkFlamingoFrm]

It's a little unclear how you can see the beak. Did the membrane get broken? Did you hatch the bird? If it's hatched, the advice given would be totally different than if we're talking about a chick in a busted egg, which I assume would die without help.

If it does hatch I assume it will be special needs and probably not live despite special care. If its beak had been cut off, it would likely regrow, but since it's failed to grow, there's no reason to assume it will... Unless someone has experience with this defect in quail. I would assume culling is kindest. If it only has the lower mandible, it can't peck and its tongue would likely shrivel and become useless, maybe even die off, and its nasal and mucosal membranes in that area would dry up. So it couldn't drink or eat without your help. It couldn't preen itself either.

If you've bred your quail too close to any vaccines, meds, or similar, you should review this to see if the defect is something caused by an accident or mistake; if you've followed all the withholding guidelines, maybe you have defective stock, and need to weed them out of your flock.

Best wishes.

thanks! I actually bought the eggs, so Im not sure if the parents had any issues. When the thermometer fell, it smashed the shell and blood started dripping out..so I did the best I could to remedy that and then noticed that the beak was deformed. I left it in the shell like I found it and this morning it was dead. The membrane had torn & it was a mess.. Im not sure how I did it, but the thermometer flung about a foot in the air & came down on the egg..and its one of the bigger digital ones. Only 1 egg hatched out of 40, but we had a power outage the night before hatch day & It killed most of my chicken eggs, so Im assuming thats what happened to these too.. I opened them since it is now 3 days after hatch day & they had all pipped their membrane & died, the same that happened with the chickens, so I would guess that it was attributed to the power outage, because Ive never had that happen before. I think Im getting a small generator for the incubators, so that never happens again.

 

[chooks4life]

A backup generator sounds like a good idea for sure. If I were you I would either talk to the breeder about the defective chick, or find another breeder. That's not really a small defect. It would be terrible to find that a flock of normal looking birds are passing that on, if it's heritable.

Sorry to hear of your bad experience, and I hope you have better ones in future. I've had some really random accidents and experiences with almost-pipping eggs, too... Even though I've never used an artificial incubator.

All the best.

 

[PinkFlamingoFrm]

thanks, yeah I will be emailing her a little later. I did open the rest, they pretty much looked normal as much as I could tell, must have just been that one. Some didnt form at all, but that was only like 3 of them.
I am going to be looking into a generator soon, winter is coming, and we have had some snow storms knock out power, in 1993 I was told power was out for like 2 weeks, but I was only 5 so I dont remember... either way I need to be prepared for winter.
We are driving 3 hours to pick up my new puppy today & maybe Ill stop somewhere on the way to grab a generator, we live in the middle of nowhere, so its hard to really find anything around here..lol