If you’re raising a baby chicken you’ll likely have a few odd and fascinating discoveries, some of these discoveries may be cute and others may be quite disturbing.
You may be concerned about your baby chickens vibrating. This article explores why your baby chicken is doing this.
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Baby chicken is vibrating:
Animals can act very oddly in the cutest of ways and one way that animals can act oddly is by vibrating, a variety of animals do this including chicks.
Here’re is why your baby chick may be vibrating:
The bird may be cold:
No one is immune to feeling the cold, including animals, like baby chicks, in fact, your baby chick gets cold very quickly and easily.
Adult chickens are kept warm by their feathers. The feathers work as insulation and traps warm air between the feathers and the bird’s skin.
Baby chicks don’t have the same type of feathers as adult chickens do, they have soft fluffy feathers called down, down doesn’t insulate the bird very well or keep it warm.
Because of this, the birds will get cold very easily and this may cause the bird to start to vibrate or shiver.
The shivering is the bird’s way of generating heat, the shivering causes the muscles to contract and produce heat which helps to keep the bird warm somewhat.
If the bird is cold then it will also likely peep incessantly.
What to do:
The mother bird will usually keep the baby chicks warm by sitting on the babies when it’s cold out. This enables her to share her heat with the babies while they are still young.
While you can’t sit on your baby chick you can keep the bird warm by putting it under a heat lamp.
If the cold was the issue, then the bird will huddle up to the lamp and will stop shivering and peeping once it isn’t cold anymore.
The bird is happy:
Another reason why your bird may be vibrating may be that the bird is simply happy.
Baby chickens make a variety of sounds and actions when they are happy including vibrating and purring sounds.
What to do:
This is normal behavior and in fact, this is something that you want from your birds, it’s their way of communicating that they’re happy where they are or happy that you’re around.
The bird is Ill:
If your bird isn’t vibrating because of the above reasons then the bird may simply be ill with some sort of respiratory infection.
If your chick is ill then the bird will likely start showing other signs of being sick like sneezing, wheezing or labored breathing, lethargy, decreased appetite, swelling around the eyes or beak, discharge from the eyes or nostrils, poor comb or wattle color.
What to do:
The recommended course of action, in this case, is to take the bird to the vet for an examination and treatment.
There are a variety of different respiratory diseases that your bird may be suffering from and chickens are the most fragile when young.
So, taking the bird to the vet as soon as you can would be the best course of action.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Baby Chick Cries When Pooping, Quail Chick Not Growing, Quail Chick Leg Problems, Quail Chick Feet Problems, Day Old Chick Not Eating, 5 Day Old Chick Not Eating, 2 Week Old Chick Not Eating, Lethargic Quail Chick, Baby Chick Not Moving Much