Lethargic chicks

Post Reply
G Williams
On the Roost
Posts: 164
Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 11:27 am
Location: Egbert/ Cookstown
x 224

Lethargic chicks

Post by G Williams » Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:04 am

I bought a small incubator from Amazon. After playing around with temperature controls and manually rotating the eggs I got a 75% hatch rate. I had 3 pens with different breeds in the same coop. All get the same feed and occasionally get table scraps (vegetable) 2 breeds hatched on day 21 and you can see them flourish. 1 breed hatched 90% on days 22 and 23 1 only piped. They seemed to lack vigour and flipped on their back or sides when they tried to get up. They only lived a day . I started the hens on B vitamins. The hens are 4 years old still laying well. The Rooster is 1 year old sourced from the original breeder. Any other suggestions?
0

User avatar
lolotsung
Free Ranging
Posts: 802
Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:18 am
Location: Caledon
x 738

Re: Lethargic chicks

Post by lolotsung » Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:09 pm

One thing I noticed was... I had 2 devices for temperature and humidity... An Atomic wall clock...a cheap Amazon device and both gave me wildly different readings... So I put a meat thermometer in to be the referee... Well the cheap Amazon device was close to the meat thermometer so I went with that... I'm not sure but would less than ideal conditions result in weak chicks? I'm a not experienced chicken owner... 🙈🙈🙈
1
:broodyhen: :chicks: :feed ducks: :iheartpto:

User avatar
Ontario Chick
Poultry Guru
Posts: 5397
Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:12 am
Answers: 2
Location: Carp - West Ottawa
x 9618

Re: Lethargic chicks

Post by Ontario Chick » Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:20 pm

G Williams wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:04 am
I bought a small incubator from Amazon. After playing around with temperature controls and manually rotating the eggs I got a 75% hatch rate. I had 3 pens with different breeds in the same coop. All get the same feed and occasionally get table scraps (vegetable) 2 breeds hatched on day 21 and you can see them flourish.

1 breed hatched 90% on days 22 and 23 1 only piped. They seemed to lack vigour and flipped on their back or sides when they tried to get up. They only lived a day . I started the hens on B vitamins. The hens are 4 years old still laying well. The Rooster is 1 year old sourced from the original breeder. Any other suggestions?
Judging by your post the temperature was too low in the incubator, probably a cause of the problem,

I admit I used to set the incubator a bit higher , so I would shorten the time of staring at the eggs doing nothing, which caused the eggs hatch at 20-21 days, no harm to chicks.
3

Post Reply

Return to “Incubating and Hatching”