Frankenchick

[LizHurleysVPL]

So, I've hatched out some chicks in my incubator this weekend. The first 9 are lovely fluffy little cheepy things. The type of chicks you'd see on Easter cards. The type of chicks I've hatched out in their hundreds before.

Anyway, the last egg pips, it's a little black chick. It hatches. OMFG. It's got no feathers on it's back. A few around it's bum. Except for that, it's bald. It's sooo ugly. It looks prehistoric. In fact DS1 (7) recoils on seeing it. We call it Frankenchick. Or Frank for short.

Frank's eyes are closed. I'm not holding out much hope at this point. I leave him (?) alone in the hatcher and move the other hatchlings to a brooder. 6 hours later, his eyes are still closed. I give them a wash with warm water. They open and Frank fixes me with a beady stare and cheeps.

I'm still not wildly optimistic. This morning Frank is still alive and trying to escape from the hatcher so I move him to the brooder. I haven't seen him eat yet but I'm hoping that he will see his brooder mates and get the message. He's still quite lively and ALIVE!

Aww! Sounds quite cute! A face only a mother could love. I hope to hear more about Frank's progress...

Don't give up on Frank just yet! When we get ours out of the incubator and under the lamp, we always hold them and firmly dip their beak into the water and to the same with the food bowl. we also take little tiny bits of chick crumb and sprinkly it from above to excite some interest from the chicks. Their is always one who catches on and the others follow suit. Might be that Franky baby needs to see this and he will get the message. You might even have stumbled across a new breed of chicken like those hairless dogs and cats that people pay a fortune for! Good luck with him.

Frankenchicks are the best! I had one called Mungo years ago. He was a bit slow on the uptake and had a kind of elephant-man lumpy one-eyed head and limp, but he was lovely!

He's still alive. And very noisy. I have put a couple of pictures on my profile. He's meant to be a silkie. His parents are prize winners. Where have I gone wrong?

omg, frankenchick is so cute, hope he goes from strength to strength.

aww Frank looks so cute. how is he doing?

awwwww
bless him!

he'll be beautiful, don't worry

Frank is still alive and noisy and without feathers but he's adapting to life under the electric hen well . He's not getting picked on which I was a bit worried about and he's holding his own against the other bigger chicks. He is a bit of an attention seeker though - if there's any cheeping it's usually Frank. It may be that he feels the cold a bit more as he doesn't have much fluff.

a friends mums knits jumpers for her rescue hens

i saw a frank lookalikey on escape to the country bbc2 earlier. glad he is doing ok and not getting picked on. whenever we take some ex batts in my son always chooses the most pathetic looking one to add to our quota as he feels sorry for them. we always expect them to die as they look so bedraggled and small even for an ex batt but they usually turn out to be most boisterous!

Good old Frank ! made my day to hear he is still going.