Substitute chick starter feed??

[Ridgerunner]

I had chicks get into the dish of oyster shell unbeknownst to me. Out of six chicks, one died, two had to be culled, one developed cross-beak at two weeks old, and the other two are fine.

How do you relate any of this to them getting into the oyster shell? How is cross-beak related to too much calcium? I don't know what the symptoms of the other three were. I don't understand.

 

[Debbie292d]

How do you relate any of this to them getting into the oyster shell? How is cross-beak related to too much calcium? I don't know what the symptoms of the other three were. I don't understand.

Speaking about overdosing calcium.

The cross beak is the first one we've had in 9 years of breeding/raising silkies. The other three that died lost the use of their legs. Their sciatic and other leg nerves run through their kidney. Too much calcium will cause kidney damage.

Is there a correlation with this and the one cross beak? No idea, but oddly she is one of the six that were apparently regularly partaking of the calcium dish in the breeding pen. They had access to nothing else but what I put in there. So I caused this.

 

[FrostRanger]

I think the crossbeak was unrelated to the incident, it can take several weeks for crossbeak to show up so she was born with it, but it wasn't visible until she was a bit older

 

[Debbie292d]

I think the crossbeak was unrelated to the incident, it can take several weeks for crossbeak to show up so she was born with it, but it wasn't visible until she was a bit older

I can go with that, as her legs are perfectly fine. It's just odd that it would come out in a chick whose parents have provided me several dozen hatching eggs, and never one was. I didn't notice it until the others started walking around dragging a leg, at about two weeks old, so it was like four of them were falling apart at the same time.

 

[Debbie292d]

I can go with that, as her legs are perfectly fine. It's just odd that it would come out in a chick whose parents have provided me several dozen hatching eggs, and never one was. I didn't notice it until the others started walking around dragging a leg, at about two weeks old, so it was like four of them were falling apart at the same time.

I would add, that was the first time all year I let the hens hatch chicks. The rest of the time, I incubated. That's the last time I let the hens hatch too. This is a huge sore spot with me, and it was hard on both of us as we spent a little over two weeks doing physical therapy twice a day, B-Complex, and chick chairs, and they kept getting worse, not better.