Jemma Rider
Songster
One of my chicks passed away yesterday, her name was Ozzy and she was a black sumatra. I found her Friday morning under one side of the mama heating pad shaking and unable to stand. I assumed she had gotten trapped underneath and took precautions to prevent it from happening again and so i check them twice a night and at least every thirty minutes during the day.
Ozzy died in my hands after flipping over twice, and a few seconds after she stopped breathing blood seeped out of her vent and onto my hands. I read that coccidiosis can cause blood in droppings and freaked out but since i hadn't seen any blood in poo and i thought Ozzy was trapped i decided to research before freaking out even worse and since my chicks were only six days old (one week today) and from what i read coccidiosis mainly affects chicks over two weeks and has an incubation period of five days (the information varied from source to source so i choose the average), i decided it was unlikely this is what killed her but still read everything i could about it.
Tonight i went in to put my chicks to bed and switch off the lights and i did my usual thing, i picked them all up and said goodnight and looked over the brooder for any spilled water or unusual poo.
There was one poo that caught my eye, it had a sort of gooey orange speck on one side, so i grabbed a toothpick and looked through it, it didn't seem like blood to me but i still removed all of the paper towels and wiped the tank down before replacing everything and changing the water again.
None of my three living chicks seem sick, though i am paranoid and have noticed Ginger my dark cornish chick sitting down for what seems like more then usual to me but i am very paranoid now and can't sit still knowing they could have something. I read that sometimes intestinal lining in the poo can be mistaken for blood so i want to be sure before i do anything dramatic or hasty.
So i want to know if i could put corid in their water even if I'm not completely sure they have anything, as a preventive measure just in case that is what took Ozzy. again I'm not going to do anything hasty but I'm still freaking out a bit since i already lost one most likely because of a mistake i made not leaving any space between the heating pad and the brooder walls and i never want to risk anything like that happening again i knew i would lose one eventually but i just didn't expect it to be all because of me.
So i figured I'd just put this up to be safe, the chicks are on medicated chick feed and have electrolytes in their water currently. I have three, a dark cornish, a porcelain d'Uccle, and a blue white crested polish all seven days old, eight in about ten minutes because it's almost midnight, they hatched on Monday and were shipped to me arriving Wednesday. Their brooder is a large reptile tank and no it is not too hot and has good ventilation, from what I've read it's perfect with the heating pad in there, many people have voiced concerns that they will overheat but they regularly duck under the heating pad for warm ups and then commence to run around excitedly on both the warm side and cool side. They are on paper towels so i can clean their brooder daily and see if any poo is irregular, i was planning on switching them to pine shavings when they hit two weeks old as well as getting a larger brooder once they stop trying to eat everything whether edible or not (if that never stops then i will switch them anyway). I wake them up and turn the lights anywhere between seven to nine and turn them off when they go under the heating pad for the night. I clean the brooder daily and check for things like pasty butt at least once an hour. They are living off feed, i feed no treats as they are too young though i have been thinking about getting them a clump of grass and letting them explore it.
Sorry i know this was long but i figured the more detail the better. And I'm sorry if it sounds like i bought these chicks on impulse without doing real research, I've been studying to get them since before i got my five adult chickens i am just very unsure of myself at this point in time.
Ozzy died in my hands after flipping over twice, and a few seconds after she stopped breathing blood seeped out of her vent and onto my hands. I read that coccidiosis can cause blood in droppings and freaked out but since i hadn't seen any blood in poo and i thought Ozzy was trapped i decided to research before freaking out even worse and since my chicks were only six days old (one week today) and from what i read coccidiosis mainly affects chicks over two weeks and has an incubation period of five days (the information varied from source to source so i choose the average), i decided it was unlikely this is what killed her but still read everything i could about it.
Tonight i went in to put my chicks to bed and switch off the lights and i did my usual thing, i picked them all up and said goodnight and looked over the brooder for any spilled water or unusual poo.
There was one poo that caught my eye, it had a sort of gooey orange speck on one side, so i grabbed a toothpick and looked through it, it didn't seem like blood to me but i still removed all of the paper towels and wiped the tank down before replacing everything and changing the water again.
None of my three living chicks seem sick, though i am paranoid and have noticed Ginger my dark cornish chick sitting down for what seems like more then usual to me but i am very paranoid now and can't sit still knowing they could have something. I read that sometimes intestinal lining in the poo can be mistaken for blood so i want to be sure before i do anything dramatic or hasty.
So i want to know if i could put corid in their water even if I'm not completely sure they have anything, as a preventive measure just in case that is what took Ozzy. again I'm not going to do anything hasty but I'm still freaking out a bit since i already lost one most likely because of a mistake i made not leaving any space between the heating pad and the brooder walls and i never want to risk anything like that happening again i knew i would lose one eventually but i just didn't expect it to be all because of me.
So i figured I'd just put this up to be safe, the chicks are on medicated chick feed and have electrolytes in their water currently. I have three, a dark cornish, a porcelain d'Uccle, and a blue white crested polish all seven days old, eight in about ten minutes because it's almost midnight, they hatched on Monday and were shipped to me arriving Wednesday. Their brooder is a large reptile tank and no it is not too hot and has good ventilation, from what I've read it's perfect with the heating pad in there, many people have voiced concerns that they will overheat but they regularly duck under the heating pad for warm ups and then commence to run around excitedly on both the warm side and cool side. They are on paper towels so i can clean their brooder daily and see if any poo is irregular, i was planning on switching them to pine shavings when they hit two weeks old as well as getting a larger brooder once they stop trying to eat everything whether edible or not (if that never stops then i will switch them anyway). I wake them up and turn the lights anywhere between seven to nine and turn them off when they go under the heating pad for the night. I clean the brooder daily and check for things like pasty butt at least once an hour. They are living off feed, i feed no treats as they are too young though i have been thinking about getting them a clump of grass and letting them explore it.
Sorry i know this was long but i figured the more detail the better. And I'm sorry if it sounds like i bought these chicks on impulse without doing real research, I've been studying to get them since before i got my five adult chickens i am just very unsure of myself at this point in time.
