Pip my 7 week old Marans pullet went to her new home with Myhrr and BF in San Francisco this morning. The temp out here is in the high 90's and it is cold and foggy in SF. I was not dressed appropriately--but it is probably the ideal climate for Pip. Marans are suppose to do particularly well in cool damp conditions. Thank you so much Myhrr for giving her a good home!
Now the sick chick--my last breeder Barnevelder chick to hatch, and my last chick of the season, may be blind. He peeps constantly and at first I thought he had splayed legs because he seemed so unsteady. Now I'm noticing that he doesn't peck at things and runs around with his wings spread out. He's not so unsteady, but he seems unfocused. How will he survive if he can't see to peck? He is quieter today and getting more sure of himself moving around. What is the prognosis for a blind chick. I'm pretty sure he is a roo. Is there anything I should do for him?
Pip and a sick chick.
Wow thats terrible, I have no clue how to help sorry!
I'm so sorry Catscan. I have no idea how to help him or how he will manage to socialize with other chickens.
MollyD
i hope he is OK...
We have had chickens blind in one eye and do well. We had 2 that went blind in both due to Fowol Pox and they didn't make it, but not because they were blinded but because of the Fowl Pox itself.
Not sure how a chick would survive blinded. If he can't see to peck for food he won't thrive and grow as he should. Does he peck at stuff? Maybe he can see a little if he does. Do the eyes look like other chicks or are they filmy? Usually you can tell if the eye is blind or if they can see some out of it. Hopefully he has some sight.
I am afraid he is completely blind. He doesn't peck at all. He is still moving around, but I am not sure how he can survive since he doesn't go to the water unless I hold his beak in it and even when I hold his beak against wet mash he eats almost nothing. If he would just reflexively peck at the ground he would be fine--but I think this must be a reponse to visual cues--you know how they peck at eatch others eyes and toes at first. Feeling bad.
I'm so sorry Catscan!
Thanks, Ladybugs.
Catscan I am really so sorry about this. It sounds like you may need to ask your vet to send this one over the Rainbow Bridge for you :-( before he suffers.
MollyD
I know Molly. I wish I'd ordered the argon gas for euthanisia before this. I just learned that KFC has issued a public relations message that it is going to use "inert gases" to slaughter their chickens as opposed to sticking and bleeding them. Argon is an inert gas--so I guess they read the same government papers on humane slaughter I did.
The chick is a roo, so its life was going to be short anyway. If it would feed I would try to give it as long a life as possible, but....If it starts to feed today I'll work with it, if not I think I'll do as you say.
sorry to point out the obvious, but his exteneded life would not be pleasant, and i dont' think he oculd or would eat enough to make him edible...
i am really sorry about this guy... i lost anothe rchick to drowning today. maybe mother nature is culling out tthat "I want to go swimming gene". DH thinks it is becasue the ducks sat on some of the eggs for a while...
hugs
tf
It's hard because he's preening and doing all the normal chick things--
......except eating.........
I'm sorry your having such a hard time Catscan! I feel for you. I think we have all had to go through something like this that is so hard. I don't want to come off as a heartless hard a**, because I am not....I want to help you the only way I know how.....you are going to have to do what is best for him and the only way to do that without it tearing you apart even more is to tell yourself all the things you know are true.....that if he won't peck at anything, he is going to starve and suffer and I know you don't want that. Please try and get your brain moving in another direction so that it is easier to come to terms with this. If you focus on the normal cute stuff he is doing this is going to break you heart even more and that would be even more awful.
I wish I knew of some trick to get him to peck and eat, but I don't. Even if I did, you then face everyone else picking and pecking on him because he is different and weaker....and that would be awful too. My thoughts and heart go out to you.
I am wondering how much chickens go by smell, or do they smell at all? Is it possible this is a temporary condition he might grow out of?
Guess I could google blind chicks and see if anything come up.
Karen
Here's what one site said:
Anonymous on Sunday, September 26, 1999 - 10:46 am:
Young chick's are often born with the membrane still covering their eyes.
If after a day or two they seem to be out of step with the other's gently wash their eyes with cool water. This will remove the remnants of the membrane. Hope all is well.
I had the same problem with one of mine and now he is a very large cockeral.
Wow Karen....how neat you found that. I sure hope it works!
Another site says the brooder light can blind them.
I just washed his face--he did have membrane stuck to him when he was hatched--it dried on him. I don't think it is the problem. He has behaved this way since the hatcher which only has a 25 watt bulb and it hasn't bothered any other chick--so I don't think that is it. It is good that all this info is getting out there though.
I'm so sorry to hear about your chick. I hope he improves soon.
I wanted to let you know that Pip arrived home just fine. We wired up a little section in the coop for her to meet the other girls, and aside from some heart rending lonely peeps, things were ok. Today we left the two toughest pullets in the henhouse for the day, and put the lowest ranking pullet before Pips arrival in the run by herself. We gave her a few moments in the run by herself to get lonely, and then we put Pip in with her. Although she pecked at Pip a couple of times, I caught them sleeping together in the middle of the day. I think we will keep those two together for a while, and try to combine the flock in a several days.
Myrrh
Thank you so much Myhrr--it sounds like you have a great plan for integration. They are young and I think they will accept each other pretty quickly. Pip is not much of a challenge to the dominant hen, but she never seemed to invite bullying either. Let me know how things go. Have you thought of a new name for her?
I'm not sure that this will end well--but after wiping the chicks head and eyes with a damp cloth--he seems to be seeing movement in a way he never did before. Now when I move my had rapidly toward him he turn his head away and even move a little in the opposite direction. I am going to try more cleaning of his head. He still hasn't pecked but he seems more aware of where the other chicks are and may follow their lead. If not, I still think wiping his head has helped.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed Catscan!
me too! Karen's googling might have saved the guy, who knew?
Myrrh, dont 'yo u have soup sald and snadwich? how about a Wrap? lol
Best wished Catscan! Maybe a few more eye washes daily are in order to get any remaining membrane?
A special thank you to Karen for doing a search! You may have saved this little guy's life!
MollyD
I hope the little one is doing better this morning.
I do have Soup, Salad, and Sandwich. Wrap is a good idea. So far we have come up with Schnitzel (that is kind of fried chicken). Anyway, Soup and Shnitzel hang out and sleep together, so although Schnitzel is not yet loved, she isn't so lonely.
Myrrh
How is your little one today Catscan?
great name Mhyrr! i think Cat is extra busy at work today. hope to hear good news later...
myrrh, I thought schnitzel was a kind of rabbit dish as in veiner schnitzel. But I guess you could use chicken instead of rabbit.
GG
I think it is a local dish that has different meanings depending on where you come from. I think in Germany it is generally veal, but where I come from it is always chicken. I admit it is also a bit of an inside joke in that everyone in my family except my nuclear family on both sides eat it almost exclusively. When my grandpa came to my fathers second wedding, he looked at the banquet and thought there was absolutely nothing to eat since there was no Schnitzel.
Myrrh
I like Schnitzel--if it's any support I always made chicken schnitzel for my kids. According to FoodWord it is: "Egg- and breadcrumb-battered, fried meat cutlet." I think the original word just meant a slice or cut of something.
Now about the sick chick--it seems to see movement now. But it does not appear to eat. Still it is now five days old and still pretty active although I have not been able to get it to take food from a syringe or spoon.
I went to see the wizard today--Dr. Mark Bland of the Avian Testing Lab of the University of California recommended by CA Public Health. This is a wonderful man! He is the only one who responded to my attempt to get two of my 18 week olds tested for AI and Typhoid/Pullorum so I can ship them to Texas........and he did it for free! He likes to support backyard poultry keepers. He met me in the parking lot, checked my chickens (he says they are very healthy and clean and had never heard of a Welsummer) He also picked up all the paper work for the permit and will call Texas and get the permit for me and notifiy CA. It should all be done by Thursday.
I asked him a couple questions and he answered them in detail. He said the best way to do a cervical dislocation on a chick is to use the handles, not the blades of scissors. You put the chicks neck between the handles and close it while pulling gently on the body. He also taught me to do it on adult bird if necessary (this is a method of euthansia). He says people use too much force and it is technique not power that makes it quick and clean.
He also said a blind chick should do well as long as you don't move its food and water. I think there is something else wrong with my little guy because he is half the size of the others--even if he weren't eating he shouldn't be that small. I am going to keep working with him and add vitamins in case it is a metabolic problem.
Advertised chicks in Sacramento--nothing. In San Francisco/Berkeley and I am inundated! Everyone wants chickens--pullets only, of course. I have to think this out. Dr. Bland said that the only sure way of sexing is by blood test. I have access to lab facilities and am going to see if I can learn how to do it. It can't be any harder than doing PCRs.
This message was edited Jun 18, 2008 1:24 AM
PCR?
well, did he have an opnion whether your RIR is a roo? will i have to send her back if not?
glad things went well, bet you had a busy day! me too, ordered 50 asstd bantams, DH has confirmed i am losing my mind... but i think they will sell well, and they were cheap with NO shipping! It's Molly's fault!!!
tf--Why are you so interested in the sex of my RIR?:0). I took someone's advice and brought both RIRs--he said 80-90%, of the two it is the one with the big floppy red comb--So I that is the one going to Texas! You might run into "him" there. That's when the Wizard said that the only way to tell for sure is a blood test.
PCR--Polymerase Chain Reaction--Molecular technique, but it is pretty cookbook.
They are so going to laugh at work when I tell them that you are going to sex your chicks by PCR. Do you have the right primers already, or will you have to buy them?
Thanks for the nights entertainment.
Myrrh
Well, I hope I don't need to use PCR. The reagents are too expensive! Not sure what the blood test actually involves...
So I was looking up some other options for sexing chicks, and it seems that there is some talk about using flow cytometry (it is done for a lot of other birds). I guess the deal is that unlike in humans, birds have sex chromosomes that are zz and zw. Apperently the z and the w chromosomes have sufficiently different sizes in some types of birds that you can actually see the difference using a propidium iodide stain. I don't know if you have access to any FACS instrumentation, but I regularly run our FACSCaliber and FACSAria. I don't know how much effort you want to put into this sexing, but if you want to give it a try I can try to find some protocols.
Myrrh
cool!
Hi Myrrh--it would be extremely useful to work out a simple, inexpensive (relatively) method for sexing chicks. More and more people are interested in small urban backyard flocks--and rooster chicks are a real liability in pursuing that end. In rural areas the roos aren't such a big problem since people are willing to slaughter them. But every response I received from my listing of Barnevelder chicks in the East Bay included the concern that they not be roosters--and an unwillingness to eventually see slaughtered what will be, in part, a family pet. I feel the same way.
Unfortunately vent sexing is more an art than a science--and I have been the recipient of some really bad artists' work.
Avian sex chromosomes seem to be in a bit of a black box. The W chromosome has been considered almost a throw away, but I just read they have found a gene on it that may code for a protein related to "henniness". I haven't seen a paper on using flow cytometry, do you have the reference? I wonder if it requires antibodies and where you get them. It would be interesting to look into.
I am also going to contact Dr. Bland and ask more about the blood test he was referring to. I know they use feathers (and the blood in them?) to sex parrots etc.
I love projects! Let me know if you learn anything else:0)
The antibodies were my concern as well. My information came from a couple different references that I will look for when I have time. It seems that people do sexing in rare birds in this manner. From my very quick reading, its seems that cells are collected either from blood or feather pulp, and reduced to just their nucleus. They are then incubated with PI and no antibodies, and analyzed by flow. We use PI all the time and you don't need much at all for a given experiment. There are several parts I am not sure about. We analyze cells all the time, but I don't know anyone who runs just nuclei. Also, we generally use PI to gate out dead cells. It binds to the DNA of dead cells , so I guess it would bind all of the DNA in just the nuclei. I need to look for some FACS plots to say for sure, but I am guessing that they run the nuclei and can differentiate between boys and girls by the FSC and SSC profiles if the difference in size between the z and w chromasomes are significant.
With respect to samples, I saw a paper were they used chicken blood as a control, and they processed it the same way we process regular blood by collection in EDTA, and the incubation at 37*C with Dextran. For feather pulp, I need to read how it is done, but I may have access to what is needed. The real part I have no idea about is how one prepares just nuclei from cells. I will look for some of those papers and send you the links. If it looks feasible, I am happy to give it a try. Nothing I have read so far about it sounds either difficult or expensive. I think the big thing I will need is samples from a boy and girl for controls.
Myrrh
Here is one interesting link:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v108n01/p0206-p0208.html
Myrrh
Excellent. We would have good controls with the Marans because they auto-sex and I have Schnitzel's(?) hatch mate, Eiffel who is all roo (just have to hope he doesn't start crowing soon). Look forward to hearing from you!