3 healthy chicks and a poorly one

Chick number two, a speckled sussex hatched out around 3pm yesterday. It came out so quickly that i actually almost missed the moment.  I saw it was making good progress with chipping round the shell and then 10 mins later i got up to look and just saw it fully push its way out.  Its now fluffed up nicely and showing signs of eating a few crumbs. The owlbeard chick decided to put it firmly in its place and let it know he/she was top chicken.  I had no idea they began the peking order so early, its astonishing.

speckled sussex chick minutes old

wow, hatching is such hard work!

Chick number 3, a brahma, had a bit of trouble hatching and after a long period of getting nowhere beyond the first tiny hole eventually fought its way out around 10pm last night.  It too is finding its feet okay. I will be checking to see its eating and drinking later today as the egg yolk its absorbs just before hatching can keep them going for 24 hours or more.  I was quite tired by this time and so i managed to get a small video of the hatch but no still shots, but here is one of all three of them instead.

brahma chick is the one at the back

When it comes to chick number 4 though its another story. There is a lot of theories about helping chicks out fo the shells. If nothing happens then some say you should accept natures decision and that it probably wouldnt have thrived.  But i have done this a few times now and although we had heard no sounds coming from the egg i knew there was a fully formed chick inside so our policy was to give it a fair go.  We broke through the shell and amazingly heard it faintly cheeping. Trouble was it was stuck to the membrane and to remove it meant a possible loss of blood and shock to the chick.  We decided to open the membrane just enough to free the beak so it could breathe and then leave it overnight and give it a chance.  This morning it was still going so after much discussion hubby and i helped it fully out as the blood was not so bad now. we found that it had not totally absorbed all the yolk and so it is alive but very, very weak and poorly. It is in the incubator by itself now on a kind of chicken life support. We will just have to see how it goes.

fight little one, fight