Additions to the Flock

This month we have been cooking a new brood of chicks in the incubator. Our reconditioned auto-turn incubator gave up the ghost and I’m going to have to either get it repaired properly, or get another one. Our stop-gap incubator is a manual one. The manual incubator is pretty good, it does everything that you want an incubator to do ... it keeps eggs at a constant temperature and you manually manage the humidity and egg turning.

About half of our previous brood of chicks had curly toe. This is a condition where the toes of one or both feet are bent and will not straighten. Having researched this a little (seriously ... only a little) it is likely to have been caused by one of three things:

1. Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) deficiency in the hen (pretty likely as the hen has curly toe herself);

2. Temperature in the incubator too high (must be maintained at <= 37.5);

3. Foot bent in egg (I find this unlikely ... but then what do I know?)

At first I thought that I’d have to cull the chicks with the condition, but according to my reading, the condition does not cause the bird any pain, nor does it offer a health threat to the bird or to us. So, I am very happy to report, the chicks will not need to be culled. I accept that I will need to cull chickens in the future, but I am adamant that I will only do this when necessary.

I’ve looked into different ways of delivering higher levels of riboflavin to my chooks so that the reoccurrence of curly toe is less likely. There are a couple of food-stuffs that you can use with your chooks to increase the intake of riboflavin. Things such as raw soy flour, calves liver, etc. can be used. These carry a modest level of riboflavin and you could try them. I don’t like the idea of feeding my chooks calf liver, personally. Alternatively, a good source of riboflavin and other B-complex vitamins is Vegemite, good ole Aussie Vegemite. I hope it puts a rose in my chicken’s cheeks!

All that said, my current clutch of eggs in the incubator and the chicks that are now more than 8 weeks old are not going to benefit from their mothers getting riboflavin.

For the chicks that are already out of the brooder, there’s nothing that I can do. They will have to live with their curly toes and I will have to make sure that they are happy and comfortable.

For the chicks that are in the incubator, I will need to try to reset the feet of any of the chicks with curly toe. This is done, apparently, by splinting the toe to a light and strong flat “shoe” using surgical tape. The shoe should remain on the toe(s) for about 3 weeks after which time the toe should have resumed its natural shape.

There are a dozen eggs in the incubator at the moment:

Date Laid	# Eggs	Stop Rotating	Hatch Date	# Hatched
26/10	3	13/11	16/11	2 (died)
27/10	1	14/11	17/11	1
28/10	3	15/11	18/11
29/10	3	16/11	19/11
30/10	2	17/11	20/11

I will update this table throughout the hatching period to get an idea of my hatching success.

The eggs from the 26^th have not had any success. Two of these eggs hatched and the chicks died within 18 hours of hatching. One chick did not hatch, dying in the egg. I do not know what happened with these eggs, other than incubator failure in that period. Possibly, the incubator had not run in sufficiently when the first eggs were put in. I am heartened that the egg from the 17^th hatched (although it hatched late). This chick is quite hale and hearty.

The chicks have taken longer than the usual 21 days to hatch. I suspect that this is due to a combination of things. The failure of the auto-turn incubator to turn would have partially influenced this, but I think that the temperature in the incubator was a bit low. I also suspect that the hardness of the egg-shells may be causing my chicks some jip as well.