Yolk sac not fully absorbed

Update: The two still look very puny, especially compared to the two that had no issues. The second one is still dealing with pasty butt, checked temps and everything in the brooder is perfect. I saw them both drink water, so that's good, but I forgot to get some SavAChick while I was out, and mine was crusty so we'll give them a little egg and molasses in a bit and see with that perks them up. The final chick in the incubator has still made no progress, but I can see his beak still making those eating motions (is there a name for that?) and peeping a little more... violently? now, so we will just keep on waiting.
 
Final chick hatched out, has some kind of neurological thing going on. Legs straight out, toes curled, can't hold his head up, can't sit up straight, screaming and spinning in the incubator. Giving it a little time, but I am afraid I will have to put this chick down. Worst hatch ever.
 
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.
 
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.
I know this is old, but I am in a similar situation right now. Do you remember how often you fed your chick with a syringe? I started with sugar water, but will try a smashed up chick food/water mix when it starts to be more able.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom