Homestead mailing list

["Karen L. Black" <karen AT plamondon.com>]

Bev writes:

> Karen, is there any hope for chicks born with the yolk sac unabsorbed, 
or should these chicks be dispatched asap?  Both of mine that hatched 
that way died.

I'm not an expert on incubation or saving marginal chicks, and I'm not
interested in saving every last one of a rare breed, so if this happened to
me, I would dispatch them. They are more likely to die anyway.

I did a little poking around on the phenomenon, and it appears to happen
more if the incubator is kept at too high a humidity during incubation (the
egg doesn't lose enough water during development, leading to oversized "wet"
chicks), or the hatcher is too warm, or if dirty eggs are set (giving the
bacteria on the shell a chance to infect chicks). Some of the terms you
might look for are mushy chick syndrome or omphalitis, or open navels.

Karen Black
Blodgett, OR