Starting staggered hatching adventure

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We have a total of 5 babies that hatched from the clutch of 9, not bad for unexpected eggs hatched in less than ideal circumstances.

Molly decided to stop being mama. She roosted with the main flock and left her babies behind last night. This surprised me because she mothered her last batch of chicks for 15 weeks. She mothered this batch for only 6 weeks. Thinking about it, it sort of makes sense. She hatched her last babies at the end of September and so it was the middle of October when they were this age and the nights were cold, so they still needed her. So, we moved the babies in with my Banty pullets and moved the Lavender guineas, EEs and some of the older Cornish chicks out into the main pen. I think my other Buff broody is almost done with her 4 babies, but one of them has a slipped tendon. It doesn't appear to be getting any better, though the chick is getting better at hopping. I'm seriously considering culling the chick, because I'm not sure if the poor thing will make it to slaughter age with a messed up leg because it is a Cornish and as it gains weight, it may no longer be able to hop.
 
Long overdue update. The gimpy chick died before I got around to culling it. One of the 5 chicks from the unexpected staggered hatch died. She was the chick with the blister. She stopped growing and went downhill fast. At one month, she was the size of a 1-2 week old.

Since the staggered hatch, I had two chicks hatch a week and a half ago and I had 7 babies hatch overnight/today. I need to do some chick shuffling this evening.
 

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So, I had an interesting evening. I did a whole lot of chick shuffling this afternoon to make room for the new babies I posted about earlier. After I moved them to the brooder, I set my last batch of eggs for the season (I'm pretty sure, don't hold me to it though). When I set new eggs, I always candle the eggs I set the previous week. I'm SOOO glad I did this. While I was candling some of the eggs that are supposed to hatch next week, I saw that one of them had a window of shell popped out. I panicked a bit, thinking I might have broken the egg. Nope, turned out, it was a PIP! I think this is an egg that got partially incubated outside, brought inside, moved to the incubator and the embryo SURVIVED the trip! So I just turned on my lock down incubator which I just shut off less than 30 min before and popped the egg inside. Hopefully it hatches. It still has some active veining when I looked in the window and it looks like it may be a malpo, so I'll probably be assisting a bit tomorrow if it doesn't hatch overnight.

Chickens are never boring, that's for sure!
 
I discovered yesterday that one of the chicks that hatched Wednesday had one leg splayed out to the side and it couldn't push itself up off the floor. So I put hobbles on it. This morning I found that it had pulled out of the hobbles and both legs were splayed out and the feet were cocked up off the bedding. It was starting to get sores on its hocks and it was acting pretty weak (it was pretty weak yesterday too). If the chick had fight, or would have eaten or drunk when I put it up to food, I would have given the thing a chance, but I just decided to cull it. The poor chick kept ending up in the bottom of a cuddle pile under the heater plate and probably would have been suffocated before the end of the day.
 
Redhead Rae said:
I discovered yesterday that one of the chicks that hatched Wednesday had one leg splayed out to the side and it couldn't push itself up off the floor. So I put hobbles on it. This morning I found that it had pulled out of the hobbles and both legs were splayed out and the feet were cocked up off the bedding. It was starting to get sores on its hocks and it was acting pretty weak (it was pretty weak yesterday too). If the chick had fight, or would have eaten or drunk when I put it up to food, I would have given the thing a chance, but I just decided to cull it. The poor chick kept ending up in the bottom of a cuddle pile under the heater plate and probably would have been suffocated before the end of the day.
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Ah Crap! Happens tho, kudos for acting swiftly.
Sometimes ya just know that they aren't going to thrive, better sooner than later IMO.
 
aart said:
Ah Crap! Happens tho, kudos for acting swiftly.
Sometimes ya just know that they aren't going to thrive, better sooner than later IMO.
Click to expand...
Precisely. That is why I gave the blistered chick a chance. She made it to a month old before the wound caught up to her. Poor little thing.
 

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