People, a miracle has occurred!
My chicks came from Ideal - two were DOA and I buried them. Another was very weak and just tottered back and forth and kept its eyes shut. So, I took the weak one and put it in a separate box with some mash. It had made feeble attempts to peck, but didn't seem to be able to pick anything up, so I wet the feed. Well...when it started walking, it only walked backwards and couldn't get to the feed anyway I put it in the box, so I picked it up and held it while it pecked at the feed...ended up putting another chick in with it for the night and put them down in a soft down hat to sleep in. To make a longer story short, the next morning at 4:00 a.m. I got up and looked in the box and didn't see any chick except the one I had put in the hat to keep the weak one company. The box they were in was very small and the dish with the mash in it was very shallow, but somehow the weak chick must have backed into the dish with the mash and kept backing up and was against the side of the box. Its little feet must have kept slipping in the wet mash until he was exhaused and laid in the wet mash and died.
He was the same color as the mash, sopping wet, cold as a rock, not breathing. So I let out an indescribable yelp and an OMG - MY LITTLE CHICK IS DEAD! It broke my heart - I lifted him out of the box and one of his little feet pulled slightly up toward his body, but he was wet and so cold, so I thought it a reflex action, but had hope that he might still be alive.
I left him in my hand and held him under a 40 Watt bulb, about 4" from the bulb and gently turned him with my hands covering him on each side, hollered for my X-husband to get me a paper towel - he brought it and I very gently started to scrub him all over to soak up the wet mash that was stuck to him. I just kept talking to him and telling him he could make it - and in 10 minutes he was peeping weakly but still lying in my hand barely moving, and in an hour he was standing weakly on his own. I took him to work with me in a small pet carrier (size for a tiny Yorkie), lined it with a heating pad and soft fleecy blanket pieces, fed him around the clock every hour, gave him a drop of water with an eye dropper every hour. This went on for two days, but I noticed when I held him up to peck at the food that his eyes still looked odd - they are very tiny eyes and one is tinier than the other. I think he might be blind in one eye and have low vision in the other. But people, BYC people - he is ALIVE, scratching his 'dry' feed everywhere- it has been around 10 days since I found him and he is now walking forward, drinking water, sprouting wing feathers. He is still very tiny - almost like he was starting over from a day-old chick, but he's going to make it!!!!! He is still sleeping in the pet carrier beside my bed every night and my heating pad, which has an auto-shut-off, shuts off every hour, and at that time he peeps, wakes me up, and I turn the heating pad back on. Please help me think of a good name for this little creature who would not die (and is now spoiled rotten). Thank you for reading my story. Remember - just because your chick is cold, wet, not moving, no sign of breathing - he might not be dead.
