Yolk sac not fully absorbed

[DallasChickyMomma]

Chick pipped last night, zipped and popped on out just not, yolk sac not absorbed when hatched and it bustednit quickly after, hernia, what now? Halp!

 

[RainbowHen]

Wow! What a wild ride. I am so happy the baby is doing ok and the abdomen is closing. I agree that with a second chick in a similar situation there is definitely something going on. Could be hen health/diet, could be incubation irregularities. I would be tempted to close the abdomen via an adhesive type suture but that is just me. I will be following along and sending all the good vibes I can muster. Best of luck!

 

[RainbowHen]

Update: The first one, to worst of the two, looks pretty good, moving around great, clean vent, the hole is still open some, nothing hanging out, and dry. The second one who I thought was going to do better actually looks like it might have some problems. The hole is closed for the most part, but its rear is swollen, and it had the worst case of pasty butt I have ever seen. Cleaned it up and put him back, we will see. This has been the hatch from hell, and just tells me that I need a generator if I hatch out anymore chicks. I had one die in the shell last night, it was malpositioned, and I have another chick with a good sized hole in its egg, but it's slowed down progress significantly since last night. I can see it is still moving some and a chirp here and there, so I have hope that it will make more progress and hatch sometime today.

I am sorry that you are having such a hard time

 

[DallasChickyMomma]

Wrapped it in a warm damp paper towel, put it in a clean cup, looks like the intestines have gone back in. It's not trying to run around for now, so maybe it will sort it out.

Since I'm here, it's never helpful to try to assign blame when someone is in the middle of an emergency. Maybe just help and talk it out when the emergency is over.

The chick was wing and head out when I noticed the shell was stuck to it, and when I opened the incubator I could hear the membrane crackling. I added a little coconut oil to moisten that area and put it back. While I was putting my oil away and throwing away the qtip I used to apply it the chick loosened the rest of the shell and I was back to the incubator when he pushed out. For a moment I thought all was well until the chick rolled over and I saw part of the yolk sac. I pulled the chick and egg out of the incubator again and realized the yolk sac was completely full and the intestines were hanging out, so I put it back, she'll and yolk intact, and ran to get a cup. When I got back, it was frantically kicking the shell and caught the yolk and busted it. That's when I posted here.

I am assuming there is something wrong with the chick's intestines and it's going to die anyways. It is obviously a strong healthy chick as it had it's footing almost immediately and was already trying to do normal chick things, yet hadn't absorbed the yolk.

 

[DallasChickyMomma]

Ha

ve you tried massaging it back into the chick?

Since my last update: the chick was in a moist towel in a cup. It wiggled it's way out and I realized what was left of the yolk sac detached from the chick, and most of its intestines had returned to the inside of the chick. I did attempt to return the little bit that was left outside back to the inside with minimal success. I made it a covering so it wouldn't get its toe hooked in the intestines and pull it back out. I'll check on it again in about 30 minutes.

 

[AussieSuze]

This happened to me during my first hatch, so I know how scary it is! My 2nd chick hatched day 21, with no assistance with what appeared to be a full unabsorbed yolk sac attached. Thankfully, there was no intestine involvement. We quickly taped some cardboard to the inside of the incubator to quarantine the chick in the corner it hatched. We then did some frantic searching for what to do. There are quite a lot of posts regarding this on this site. We determined there wasn’t much more we could do, except hope it absorbed the yolk overnight.
The next morning the sac was dried, but there was yolk smeared everywhere. The chick was half the size of the other chicks, and because we were unsure how much yolk it absorbed we fed the chick with a syringe. Thankfully there was a vent hole in the quarantined corner, so we could feed it without opening the incubator while the other chicks hatched.
Each day we went to sleep with our fingers crossed it would be alive the next day. After 5 days keeping it in the incubator, we washed it. It had too much smeared muck on it to fluff up. We also trimmed the dried sac, because it hadnt fallen off. Once fluffy we trimmed the umbilical cord/sac again, so it was disguised by the fluff. We then introduced it to the other chicks. It was tiny, but fit in with the others with no problem.
The chick is now a month old, the same size as the others. In fact you couldn’t tell it had any trouble in its early days. From what I’ve read we were lucky, because it could just as easily gone the other way.
Hopefully, this gives you some hope that your chick will be ok too. Good luck.

 

[RainbowHen]

This is a rare breed mix. We had a power outage, and an unusual drop in humidity during this incubation, so I wouldn't be surprised if the research shows that these are some contributing factors.

Ah. That would make sense. Hoping for a good outcome!

 

[Banty crazy]

I wish you luck and I’m reading everything! I’m also in the process of incubating a rare breed and they are shipped eggs. I took four out Wednesday because they weren’t doing anything and my fingers are crossed for the others. I’ve only dealt with one chick with an unretracted yoke sack but because it was a very expensive chick, we took it to the vet. It was one of our hawk chicks. Lol I hope you’ll keep us updated!

 

[DallasChickyMomma]

I think this will be the final update, we did end up having to put down the one with the neurological thing happening, but the other two are alive, eating drinking and pooping just fine. Looks like their umbilical holes are healed, so just watching for infection at this point, which I think would have happened by now if it was going to, so yeah. Good deal! I thought for sure they were going to die, but aside from being half the size other the other two, they are doing great.

 

[Banty crazy]

Ha

Wrapped it in a warm damp paper towel, put it in a clean cup, looks like the intestines have gone back in. It's not trying to run around for now, so maybe it will sort it out.

Since I'm here, it's never helpful to try to assign blame when someone is in the middle of an emergency. Maybe just help and talk it out when the emergency is over.

The chick was wing and head out when I noticed the shell was stuck to it, and when I opened the incubator I could hear the membrane crackling. I added a little coconut oil to moisten that area and put it back. While I was putting my oil away and throwing away the qtip I used to apply it the chick loosened the rest of the shell and I was back to the incubator when he pushed out. For a moment I thought all was well until the chick rolled over and I saw part of the yolk sac. I pulled the chick and egg out of the incubator again and realized the yolk sac was completely full and the intestines were hanging out, so I put it back, she'll and yolk intact, and ran to get a cup. When I got back, it was frantically kicking the shell and caught the yolk and busted it. That's when I posted here.

I am assuming there is something wrong with the chick's intestines and it's going to die anyways. It is obviously a strong healthy chick as it had it's footing almost immediately and was already trying to do normal chick things, yet hadn't absorbed the yolk.

ve you tried massaging it back into the chick?