Lethargic chicks
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- On the Roost
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Lethargic chicks
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?
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Re: Lethargic chicks
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...
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- Ontario Chick
- Poultry Guru
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Re: Lethargic chicks
Judging by your post the temperature was too low in the incubator, probably a cause of the problem,G Williams wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:04 amI 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?
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.
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