How to recognise and deal with pasted vents, splayed legs, curled toes, navel and yolk problems, sore eyes and runts in the first two weeks of brooding.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 14 min read
Pick up the chick that is standing alone at the edge of the brooder ring and turn it over. In the next ten seconds you can check four things: the vent under the tail, the navel on the belly, the legs and toes, and the crop at the base of the neck. Most of the small problems of the first two weeks show in one of those four places, and most of them have a simple first response if you catch them on the day they appear.
These are not the big killer diseases. They are the everyday faults found on the morning round: a chick with droppings stuck to its backside, one that cannot stand, one with its eyes shut. Each is easy to recognise. The harder skill is judging whether you have one unlucky chick or a warning about the whole house.
Before treating anything, count. Walk the brooder, pick out every chick showing the same sign and work out how many there are per hundred.
The table gives a quick sort. The sections after it explain each problem.
| What you see | Usual age | Commonest cause | First response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Droppings caked over the vent | Day 2 to 10 | Chilling, overheating, travel stress | Soften with warm water, clean, dry, correct the heat |
| Legs sliding out sideways | Day 1 to 4 | Slippery surface, hatch faults | Hobble the legs, rough flooring |
| Toes bent to one side, chick walks normally | Any age | Incubation, inherited | Usually none needed |
| Toes curled under, chick on its hocks | Week 1 to 3 | Vitamin B2 shortage in feed | Vet advice, check the feed |
| Big soft belly, wet or scabbed navel, bad smell | Day 1 to 7 | Navel and yolk sac infection | Cull, record, tell the hatchery |
| Eyes closed, watery or stuck | Any age | Ammonia, smoke, dust, injury | Clean the eye, check air at chick height |
| Small, light chick with an empty crop | Day 3 to 7 | Never started eating or drinking | Hospital corner, easy feed and water |
The vent is the single opening under the tail through which a chick passes droppings. With pasting, droppings stick to the down around it, dry into a hard grey or white cap and seal the opening. The chick strains, stops eating, and can die within a day or two.
Do not confuse the vent with the navel, which is further forward on the belly, between the legs, and may carry a small dry scab in a healthy day-old. Leave that scab alone. A brown, soft, strong-smelling dropping passed a few times a day is also normal. It comes from the blind guts and only matters if it stays glued to the chick.
A handful of pasted chicks after a long journey is common. More than that points to stress, and the commonest stress is temperature. Chilled chicks huddle and paste. Overheated chicks pant, dry out and paste. Read the brooder with a thermometer at chick height and with your eyes: chicks spread evenly are comfortable, chicks piled together are cold, chicks pressed to the edge of the ring are hot. Check that every chick found water in the first hours, since a dehydrated chick passes thick, sticky droppings.
If many chicks have white, chalky droppings, are dull and are dying, stop cleaning and call a vet. That picture can mean a bacterial infection of the gut, which needs a diagnosis.
A chick with splay leg, also called spraddle leg, sits on its belly with one or both legs stretched out to the side. It tries to rise, the legs slide apart again, and it rows itself along with its wings. Left alone, it cannot reach feed or water and dies within a few days.
The usual cause is a slippery surface in the first hours of life, when the legs are still soft: a smooth hatcher tray, a box with no rough liner, or a brooder floor of bare cement, polythene, glossy paper or woven plastic feed sacks. Faults in incubation make it more likely.
Treatment works if it starts within the first day or two. Cut a narrow strip of soft sticking plaster. Wrap one end loosely around one leg just above the foot, leave a bridge between the legs, and wrap the other end around the second leg. Set the legs at the width they would have if the chick were standing naturally, roughly two to three centimetres apart for a day-old. Soft wool tied in a loose figure of eight does the same job.
Prevention is easier. Lay rough, absorbent paper over litter, never over bare concrete. Flooring and litter depth are covered in our guide to setting up a brooder ring. If several chicks in a box are already splayed on arrival, the fault is not in your brooder, and the hatchery should hear about it.
Crooked toes bend sideways, sometimes on one foot, sometimes on both. The chick stands on the flat of its foot, walks, eats and grows like the others. Causes include incubation temperature, inheritance and smooth or wire floors. In broilers and commercial layers it is mostly cosmetic and needs no treatment. Breeders should not keep such birds as parent stock.
Curled-toe paralysis is a different matter. The toes curl inwards and under, like a closing fist. The chick is reluctant to move, rests on its hocks, and walks on them with its wings out for balance when pushed. It grows poorly although it may still try to eat. The usual age is from the end of the first week into the third.
This is the classic sign of a shortage of riboflavin (vitamin B2), which damages the nerves to the legs. It happens when feed has been stored too long or in heat and sunlight, when home-mixed feed is made without a proper vitamin premix, or when the premix was old. If several chicks of the same age show it, suspect the feed before anything else.
Just before hatching, a chick draws the remaining yolk into its abdomen through the navel, and the navel closes behind it. That yolk feeds the chick for its first days and is largely used up within about five days. A healthy day-old has a flat, clean, dry navel that you can barely find and a soft but not bloated belly.
When the navel fails to close properly, bacteria get in and infect the yolk sac. Vets call it omphalitis, and farmers know it as navel ill or mushy chick disease. Look for these signs:
Deaths usually begin in the first day or two, peak before the end of the first week and tail off in the second. The infection starts at the hatchery or before it, through dirty hatching eggs, contaminated equipment or incubation faults that delay closing of the navel. Poor brooding makes the outcome worse. A chilled, overheated or unfed chick absorbs its yolk slowly, and the yolk is exactly where the bacteria grow.
What you can do is protect the rest. Hold the brooder temperature steady, get every chick drinking and eating, remove dead chicks at each round and write down the daily count. If losses pass one chick in a hundred within the first few days, or keep climbing, ask a vet to open some of the dead chicks. Our article on why chicks die in the first week shows how to tell the causes apart, and navel checks at collection are in our guide to judging chick quality before you pay.
Start by asking how many chicks are affected and whether it is one eye or both.
One chick, one eye. This is usually a peck, a scratch or a speck of litter. Bathe the eye with boiled water that has been allowed to cool, on clean cotton wool, wiping from the inner corner outwards. Use a fresh piece for each wipe. Keep the chick in the hospital corner for a day or two so that others do not peck at the sore eye. Do not use eye drops or ointments made for people unless a vet tells you to.
Many chicks, both eyes, blinking and watering. The air is at fault. Kneel down and put your face at chick height for a full minute. If your own eyes sting, the chicks' eyes are burning. The usual culprits are ammonia from wet litter under closed curtains, smoke from a charcoal pot, and fine dust from sawdust litter or harmattan winds. Open the top of the curtain on the side away from the wind, replace wet litter around the drinkers and move any smoking heat source. Smoke in a closed brooder also means carbon monoxide, which kills chicks and can harm the person sleeping beside them. Keeping the floor dry is covered in our guide to litter management.
Eye trouble with gasping. Chicks under two weeks that breathe with open beaks and stretch their necks, some with swollen or cloudy eyes, may have brooder pneumonia, a fungal infection picked up from mouldy litter, mouldy feed or contaminated hatchery equipment. Medicines do not cure it. Remove any damp, musty litter and feed, and call a vet to confirm.
A blind chick. A chick with a missing, shrunken or cloudy eye that does not react when your finger approaches was hatched that way. If it cannot find feed and water by itself, cull it.
Two kinds of small chick appear in the first fortnight, and they need separating in your mind.
The non-starter never began eating or drinking. It lived on its yolk for three or four days and then ran out. By day three or four it is light in the hand, its crop is flat and empty, the shanks look thin, dark and dry, and it stands with its eyes closed or cheeps without stopping. Without help it dies between day four and day six. Non-starters are made in the first 24 hours, by long travel, a cold floor, too few drinkers or feed that was hard to find. The routine that prevents them is set out in our hour-by-hour plan for receiving day-old chicks.
The runt eats but does not grow. At ten to fourteen days it may be half the size of its mates and still covered in down while they are growing feathers. A few runts turn up in every batch. If many chicks are stunted, with pasty droppings and undigested feed passing through, a gut infection may be involved and a vet should see them.
Find these chicks early by feeling crops every evening for the first four days. A fed chick has a crop that is full, soft and rounded. Take out the empty ones, dip their beaks in water and move them to the hospital corner. Then judge them at day seven. A broiler chick that has done well weighs about four times its hatch weight by then. Layer chicks grow far more slowly, so compare the chick with its mates. One that is still close to its hatch weight will go on eating feed without ever making a useful bird.
Weak chicks fail in the main ring because stronger ones push them off feed and water and walk over them. Give them their own space, inside the brooder so that they share the same heat.
The corner is for recovery. A chick that is not improving after a few days has to be dealt with, not left there.
Culling is part of good chick care. A chick that cannot reach feed and water suffers until it dies, and while it lives it may carry infection. Cull when:
The accepted method on farms is a quick dislocation of the neck by someone who has been shown how to do it properly. Do not leave chicks to die in a bucket or throw them out alive. Bury or burn the bodies where dogs cannot dig them up, and enter every cull in the mortality record. A farm that hides its culls cannot see its real losses.
Each day, note the date, the age of the flock, what you saw, how many chicks were affected and what you did. Take clear photographs on your phone of the vent, navel, legs or eyes. A vet needs that record to make sense of the problem, and a hatchery needs it to trace a fault to a setting or a breeder flock.
If your chicks came from Halaal Farms Ghana and a problem appears in the days after arrival, call us on 024 915 1503 with the hatch date and what you are seeing. Advice after an order is free, and a short call on day two is worth more than a long one on day ten.
Call a vet or the district veterinary office when deaths pass about one in a hundred in the first week, when many chicks show the same sign at once, or when you see gasping, bloody droppings or twisted necks. Those are beyond first aid.
Most of what is described here is prevented by a warm, dry, well-laid brooder and chicks that start eating and drinking within hours. Our chick brooding guide sets out the temperatures and routine. For the next batch, the pages for broiler chicks and layer chicks list what we supply, and you can ask what vaccines a batch has had before it leaves the hatchery.
In most cases it is not. Pasting is usually a reaction to chilling, overheating, a long journey or late access to water, and it clears once the brooder is corrected. The exception is when many chicks have white, chalky droppings, look dull and start dying. That pattern can mean a bacterial infection and needs a vet or the district veterinary office, not home treatment.
Yes, if you act early. A soft hobble that holds the legs at normal standing width, fitted within the first day or two and left on for two to four days, lets the hip and leg muscles strengthen in the right position. The chick must stand on rough paper or litter and have feed and water within reach. Cases left for a week rarely recover.
Not without a diagnosis. Most early problems come from temperature, slippery floors, bad air, late feeding or faults at hatching, and no antibiotic corrects those. Giving drugs blindly costs money, hides the real cause and encourages resistance. Fix warmth, water and feed access first, and ask a vet to examine dead or sick chicks if losses keep rising.
Even a good batch has the odd small or weak chick, and many well-run farms keep total losses in the first week to about one chick in every hundred. If you are picking out more than two or three problem chicks per hundred, or the number grows each day, treat it as a brooding or chick quality fault and investigate straight away.
Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.
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