Feathering

Feathering

You can learn a lot about a chick’s development by the state of its feathering. The chicks must look fluffy. A newly hatched chick’s wing feathers, in particular, are still in the shaft. If the chick hatched too early, white wing feathers protruding like a flag from the edge of the wing are already visible.

The down is dry and shiny. It has a pleasant odour. The down is wet and sticky. This chick has red hocks, a string navel, poor down development on the wing and belly and signs of blood around the navel feathers. Probably caused by overheating. Over-developed, incubated at a too high temperature, and hatched too early. The chick is lighter, has shorter down, and longer wing feathers. The feathers are smeared with albumen. This is often the result of eggs with poor shell quality that are not properly candled and break in the hatcher basket. Seeing this type of chick (clubbed down syndrome) too often, indicates a riboflavin (vitamin B2) deficiency in the parent stock feed. You can also see this in large numbers when an incubator lost heat for some reason. Embryos that have been warmed to copyright protected incubation temperature in an early stage of incubation and are then cooled down might have this condition. The right level of development.