Urgent Advice Needed

[BrookelynCE]

My husband has in the past always hatched using a large cabinet incubator. We have been out of chicks for several years and now getting back into them. We bought a styro incubator to give it a shot. He has been setting eggs from his pens and having good hatch rates. Here’s where it’s going awry. When the chicks hit between a week and two weeks they just die. It is only the chicks he is hatching. We have bought chicks and ordered from a hatchery and they have all thrived. But once these chicks he has hatched start getting wing feathers they die-typically within hours of first signs that they aren’t feeling well. They are in with other chicks we didn’t raise and one by one it is only the ones he’s hatching.
What’s going wrong? I have 30 chicks, a turkey, two ducks, and a 30 guineas and the only ones dying are the ones coming from eggs out of his pens and this incubator. TIA!!

 

[Stipenvlerk]

This is strange indeed.
I can’t help you but it will help others who can if you explain the symptoms of unwell being before they die.

some other questions:
how many died already?
have you even considered doing a necropsy off one of them?
do all the hatched chickens share the same parents?

 

[Punkybrewster]

What are you feeding the parents?
High protein feed if you are hatching their eggs makes a big difference.

 

[dawg53]

Welcome to BYC. Thoroughly sanitize the incubator with ammonia water, not bleachwater. Then to be on the safe side, provide your newly hatched chicks with Corid mixed in water to drink.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

You're taking them out ofthe incubator, right? Just making sure

 

[BrookelynCE]

Yes, we’ve hatched many a chick just not in this type of incubator. They hatch fine, fluff fine, and then we move them to the brooder. Only one has made it past 3 weeks old! They are game birds and parents are on 5way scratch and laying pellets. Chicks will be vigorous until one day they are. Wings down, head dropped, feel bony on the sternum. Just lethargic. I’m at a loss because I have 25 from cackle the same age just thriving!
and they are from 2 pens of 3 birds each. On grass that rotated often.

 

[Punkybrewster]

Could it be the parent stock genetics?

 

[BrookelynCE]

I would hope not at $200 a bird and two different breeds....but I’m starting to question.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

What breeds are they? Let's start there. I know some birds have higher chick mortalities, at least in my own experience

 

[LaFleche]

There are various possible causes for your chicks dying so young.

A covert salmonella infection of the parent birds/flock. Adult chickens rarely show any symptoms but the chicks hatched of salmonella infected eggs mostly die at about 1-3 weeks of age.

Vitamin deficiency in the parent birds leading to delayed hatch and chicks with clotted/crusted vent and persisting yolk sac.

There are a variety of transferable pathogenic germs/organisms which may be transferred from the mostly inconspiciuous parent birds to the chicks.

So the best would be sending them in to have a necropsy done. This will help in the long run and you will be able to react accordingly.