an adventure in cross beaks
I split an order of chicks with a friend earlier this summer and we ordered a couple of green queens from Meyer Hatchery.
This is what I ordered: a high production layer of green eggs!
This is what I received. I didn’t notice the deformity at first as it starts out unnoticeable and slowly gets worse, but apparently cross beak or scissor beak is a malformation that is fairly common in hybrids like Easter eggers and green queens. Soon it became obvious. This is around 10 days old:
Meyer was great and gave me a refund for this chick right away. But now I have this poor deformed little fluffy thing in my possession.
This is around 3 weeks old:
At this point I was getting concerned because obviously it was getting worse. This chick was always at the feeder because she was hungry. Always eating but never actually getting food into that beak. I decided to post this photo and asked advice on a backyard chickens forum. The responses were mixed. Many people had stories about cross beaks that died around 9 months old and were never strong enough to lay and they regret not culling early on. Some people were adamant that I could take care of her and she could thrive with some hand feeding and individualized care. Another response was:
Bless your heart however the time spent writing this post should have been put towards culling that poor bird. Good luck whatever it is you decide
I went down this really weird rabbit hole about cross beaks for a week or so and agonized about this decision. My husband got very tired of me talking about it.
After I spent some time in denial I figured out that my choices were 1) cull 2) take care of the bird which involved weighing the bird to make sure she gains weight and possibly tube feeding the bird avian health shake or 3) let her continue slowly starving to death. Option 3 obviously is a terrible thing to do. And I know I’m a monster but I do not have the bandwidth to provide individualized care to a special needs chicken. I have an actual human baby to take care of all day.
So I made one last Hail Mary post about culling the poor thing. I am a weenie but I have some nice Cutco scissors that can cut a penny so surely they could do a decent job of dispatching this chick (someone responded don’t even try it I could mess that up) so what about putting her and some dry ice in a plastic bin to asphyxiate her?
This story has a happy ending because there is a whole community (of almost exclusively women) who LOVE taking care of cross beak chickens. They weigh them on a little food scale to make sure they’re gaining weight. They hand feed them specially prepared food and chuck it down the gullet. Some even love putting little diapers on the chickens so they can stay inside the house. So a very nice lady with cross beak experience responded DON’T CULL THAT CHICK and adopted my chick and named her and is feeding her properly. God bless her. Not my cup of tea but it takes all kinds.