What to do about chick indigestion? These prevention and treatment methods are very practical

For farmers, hatching chicks and raising chicks is not an easy task. Chicks have poor digestive capacity, weak resistance, and poor insulation ability, so they easily die at the chick stage. For example, chicks often have indigestion, and indigestion may prevent them from excreting, ultimately leading to serious consequences. So why do chicks get indigestion, and what should be done about it? Let's take a look together!

1. Causes

The common cause of chick indigestion is food accumulation in the crop, also called hard crop disease. Or it may be eating too much food at once, or drinking too much water, or eating moldy, unclean feed. Feeding or eating food that is too coarse, such as uncrushed corn, is too difficult to digest. It may also be an infectious disease that indirectly causes indigestion.

2. Feeding methods

After hatching and drying off, within three days, first feed clean water and a small amount of food. If pecking behavior is seen, you can feed a little ground feed and provide drinking water. Keep feeding feed, and only after half a month from hatching can you feed small-pellet formulated feed. You can also feed ground powder such as corn and soybeans, but it cannot be fed directly, otherwise it cannot be digested. Provide clean drinking water at all times for them to drink on their own.

3. Helping digestion

Add garlic, or dandelion, as well as flavoring agents such as bitter orange and fennel, to the feed to help digestion. Adding hawthorn and malt has a direct effect of promoting digestion. After one month, provide small sand grains to increase the chicks' digestive ability. When indigestion occurs, stop feeding, inject a few milliliters of cooking oil into the chicken's crop, gently massage, and afterward it will gradually clear. Or feed a little more water, massage, and after expulsion clean with 2% boric acid and feed one oxytetracycline tablet.

4. Disease prevention and treatment

If indigestion is caused by an infectious disease and there is diarrhea, use antibacterial drugs such as norfloxacin hydrochloride. If there is coccidiosis, use anticoccidial drugs, and add 0.2% probiotics or 0.1% enzyme preparations to the feed. Chicks should receive vaccines against related disease-causing diseases beforehand to avoid harm.

Chick indigestion occurs frequently, especially in extensive rural chicken raising, where a whole brood of chicks often dies. Therefore, when raising chicks, special attention must be paid to diet and health issues.