Twitchy Chick

[epeloquin]

I have six chicks (3 BR and 3 RIR). One of the reds keeps twitching her head like she is shaking her head 'no'. She is fine in every other way. She is eating well and is feathering out extremely well. In fact she is more feathered than any of the others. Anyway, this twitching is very noticeable and I was wondering what it might be. She does have her neck feathers coming in so I was wondering if there might be some kind of irritation from that. I don't know.

Anyone else run into this?

 

[KristenRae]

I ran across your post while searching this subject on BYC. Were you able to figure out what was causing it? I have two chicks with this same behavior, and am concerned at the cause.

 

[KristenRae]

I wanted to add an update, should another newbie run across this behavior I don't know what prompted the head twitching, but it appears to be a stress response. After the new chicks were habituated to all of the normal noises around here, they were fine and the twitching ceased.

 

[tiffanyhurd]

Thats good to know, because I noticed one of mine doing it yesterday. She was not doing it as much today!