Stunted Growth?

[stnkyferit]

Hi!

So I have the classroom chick here who is probably about 2 weeks old now (her wing feathers are coming in very well).....and she seems to be thriving.....

One thing I noticed is though that even though she is active, when I received the one/two day old (when she was probably about 10 days old) - she was THE SAME SIZE as the newly hatched ones. The 3 week old one (which was probably about 2 1/2 weeks when I put them together) looks GIGANTIC compared to her. The baby babies are Wyandottes.....3 week old is a Leghorn, and classroom chick is a Golden Comet.

Could it be possible that the lack of proper heating (no heat lamps) stunted her growth?

 

[chooks4life]

If she was warm enough to live she was most likely warm enough to grow normally or close to it. Lack of heating won't cause permanent stunting. Lately there seems to be a few people asking why some chicks are the same size as week-olds. The worst case I've seen so far was one tiny week-old sized and feathered bird who was in fact 8 months old. It could be many things causing it, at this point nobody knows for sure. Since so far all these non-growers are from hatchery stock and are production layers or hybrids, I'm thinking it may be genetic or due to vaccines. Sometimes things go wrong.

All the meat birds in the shops for the last few years in the towns of Queensland I've lived in recently (I've moved a lot) have suddenly become tiny, and are showing silkie mixed genes (some black bones and black flesh). The production hatcheries and breeders have been regularly publicly warning for years now that there are problems threatening due to the lack of genetic diversity. They've said nothing as to why their birds have so suddenly become tiny and of very different genes though. But this is in Australia, if you're in America your situation and reasons may be different.