5 day old CX chick just laying down

DobieLover said:

Are you pulling their feed for 12 hours? They should not have access to feed 24 hours a day as they grow so fast it can cause early death. Feed them 12 on, 12 off to control their exorbitant growth rate until it's time to process them.
That many chicks is going to need a very large, very well ventilated and clean brooder. They are pooping machines due to their genetic mutations that make them grow so fast.

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Wyorp Rock said:

Welcome To BYC

When you can, post photos of her poop.

If you have Poultry Nutri-Drench, give her 2-3drops orally twice a day for several days, see if that helps perk her up.

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JeffEdgar87 said:

Hello! This past wednesday, we received 30 CX chicks for.the first tome. We've been housing them in a cardboard box brooder with a heat lamp, a couple tower feeders and a half gallon waterer. We have been using kalmbach 18% non-gmo start right chick feed and cold tap water. So far everything has seemed like its been going well. Chicks have all been walking around and eating/drinking, and getting observably bigger every day. Have not noticed any issues, seem to be happy with the one heat light abd relatively evenly dispersed. Just today, one of the.chicks seemed to be mostly just laying when i went to check on them this morning. I picked it up and it was way less energetic then the other chicks. I put it in front of one of the feeders and it pecked at the food, and tried to put a tiny shallow dish for it to drink from but didn't seem particularly interested. I don't see anything visibly wrong (no injuries that i can tell) and it doesn't look like it has splayed legs. They all seemed to be doing equally well yesterday. After putting it in front of the food and seeing it eat it seemed a bit more energetic, but it still is really just laying down. Any ideas how to proceed would be appreciated! This is my first time and I'm trying to figure things out as best as i can.

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JeffEdgar87 said:

So far i have not been pulling their food, i was under the impression with my reading beforehand that that only needed to start once they we past the first 2-3 weeks. The brooder i have is about 7x5, currently closed off to be a bit smaller to keep them near the heat lamp. The boxes are lined with plastic sheeting, then a few sheet thick layer of packing paper, and about 2" of pone flakes. I was putting paper towels on top and changing those twice, but have stopped that as of yesterday and am turning the bedding every morning.

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JeffEdgar87 said:

I'll do what i can to try and get that kind of picture, it's hard to capture what would be specifically hers.

For the nutri-drench, is that something you'd be feeding directly from dropper somehow?

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JeffEdgar87 said:

The brooder i have is about 7x5, currently closed off to be a bit smaller to keep them near the heat lamp

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JeffEdgar87 said:

am turning the bedding every morning.

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DobieLover said:

That's too small without having it closed off. Open it up.

Where is this brooder set up?

You can probably get away with that once, maybe twice to avoid changing the bedding daily.

You need to pull the feed on these guys and put them on a 12/12 rotation. They will complain loudly during the off cycle. If this is leg pain that is keeping her from not wanting to move, you need to slow the growth rate.

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