Stuck chicks

[jarcoo0153]

My water reservoir leaked, and I had a chick stuck in the egg, I helped it out, I have hear this is a NO NO! Did I mess up, or is there a chance it might make it?

 

[sumi]

It's fine to help chicks who are having trouble hatching, so long as you make sure they are ready before taking them out of the shell. It is very important when assisting, to make sure there are no active blood vessels in the membrane around the chick, the yolk sac has been absorbed and the navel sealed up before the chick leaves the shell. If your chick completed this absorbing process before you assisted and there was no blood loss then it should be o.k. So long as the problem was something simple like a dehydrated membrane or a malposition and not a bigger issue like a severe handicap, many assisted chicks grow up and thrive.

A lot of people are anti assisting chicks because there is a lot of room for error and those errors often result in dead chicks. This makes people believe that it cannot and should not be done. But like I said above it can be done successfully, so long as you are careful and know what you're doing and when to do it. It's a personal choice whether or not to let nature take it's course though. I for one intervene when necessary and I've had losses and I've had success. If I have a malpositioned chick for example I will assist. Keep in mind that though we do our best incubator hatches are not natural and this sometimes causes problems, resulting in a need for "hands-on" hatches. And even broody hens help their chicks when needed.

For future reference (and piece of mind) I'd highly recommend this article a friend of mine put together, which explains the hatching and assisting process with photos for reference:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/step-by-step-guide-to-assisted-hatching

Hope this helped