When you think of a chick you usually think of a bird of a particular size, but nature doesn’t always work that way.
Some birds will come out smaller than the rest, these birds are called runts. Runts will eventually grow to match the size of their siblings.
If your runt chick is not growing you’d be right to be concerned, this article looks at why this happens and what to do
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Runt chick not growing:
The word ‘runt’ isn’t usually used in a positive way but it simply describes animals that are smaller than the average of its size, not necessarily sick and weak animals.
If your bird isn’t growing you should try to figure out why. Here are possible reasons why this may be happening:
Type of bird:
The type of bird that you have will determine the size that it will hatch at and grow to be. If you have Easter Eggers, and not Ameraucanas, then your bird may appear to be a runt, but this isn’t the case.
Easter Eggers aren’t a breed of chickens, but rather a variety of chickens that don’t have a uniform breed standard. Many hatcheries get these two chicken types, and eggs, confused, and label the one as the other.
There can be a wide variance in size with Easter egger chicks, some are larger like Ameraucanas and other chicks will be smaller in size like Bantams.
The different birds will express slightly different traits from their parents because they are hybrids.
What to do:
Let the bird grow and treat it the same way that you treat the other chicks, ie: give the bird enough food and water, and see how the bird grows.
Also, make sure to keep an eye on this bird to make sure that the other birds don’t peck at it. As long as this bird is playing with the others as normal it should be fine
Late hatched chick:
When your bird hatches can affect its life in a big way. If a chick hatches too early it may be undeveloped and may hatch with its yolk sac on the outside of its body.
If a chick hatches too late then it won’t have the opportunity to dry out, interact with its siblings, and begin eating its starter rations when the other birds do.
This bird may be more timid than its siblings who are more confident, the late hatched bird may become stressed by this. This added stress can suppress the bird’s growth.
What to do:
If one of your birds is late to hatching then you may need to isolate the bird in its own enclosure and give it the opportunity to dry off and start running around, without its siblings stressing it.
Once the bird is doing better, and has gotten more confident, you can add one or two birds into its enclosure to help it socialize. Introduce this bird to the rest of its siblings once it is stress-free around its one or two siblings
Differences in eggs:
Chicks in the egg are nourished by the yolk inside, the yolk delivers all the nutrients that the chick needs for growth while in the egg. More nutrients will produce a bigger chick, less nutrients will produce a smaller chick.
The size of the egg will determine the size of the yolk, the size of the yolk will determine the size of the chick.
If one of your eggs was smaller than the others, when you put the eggs in the incubator, then the yolk will be smaller and the chick that hatches will be smaller too.
In addition, if the egg was misshapen, then the bird would have been confined to growing only as much as it could have while in the egg, given the limited space
What to do:
You can’t do anything about the chick once it has hatched but you can make sure that you feed the bird all the nutrients it needs in order to grow to its full potential
If you don’t want this small chick situation to happen in the future you’d need to check that all the eggs that you put in the incubator are the same size, or are of a similar size. A large difference in the egg size will result in a smaller chick
Dwarfism:
This is different than the above conditions as these birds will not grow to reach the same size as their siblings. Dwarfism may be uncommon but it can still affect your birds.
Dwarfism is caused by a recessive gene in chickens, this gene doesn’t allow the bird to reach sexual maturity. These dwarf birds will be happy and healthy but they will be dwarf chickens their whole life.
What to do
There isn’t anything you can do about these types of birds and there isn’t anything that you could have done to keep this from happening. All you can do is make sure that the other birds don’t pick on this smaller bird because of its size
Overcrowding:
Domestic chickens still have some wild chicken instincts and will act on them in life-or-death situations.
If there is overcrowding, and there isn’t enough room and food for all of the birds in the coop, then the bigger chicks may peck the smaller ones and bully the smaller ones over space and food.
The smaller ones will be afraid to get food because they don’t want to be bullied and will stay small because they are starved and are not getting adequate food and nutrients
What to do:
Make sure that all chicks are given access to all the food and water that they need.
Also, make sure that you keep them in a space that can accommodate them. Keep an eye on your smaller bird to make sure that it isn’t being pecked and kept from food.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other chicken related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Chicken Sounds Hoarse, Sick Chicken Not Eating Or Drinking, Chicken Acting Like Something Stuck In Its Throat, Chicken Acting Disoriented, Rooster Keeps Falling Over