Chick won’t STOP CHIRPING!!

[TaylorGlade]

I use a puppy playpen so chicks can see out. Maybe that would entertain her more?

 

[artbykarenehaley]

Your bird has probably grown out of this by now but it seems like there's always one in the group that shouts it's head off. When I get a chick that likes to shout and chirp I will take our spare tablet, plug it in near thw brooder and play ambient chicken sounds. Especially ones with a content mother hen and chicks.

 

[SuperC]

Good responses. Is this your first brood of chicks? If not, you probably know that that plastic tote will be too small for this number of chicks by age two weeks. They will be trying to escape to find more room and adventure. If the weather is bad, think about the playpen idea from @TaylorGlade in the sun room for daytime. Add a cake pan with sand or dry soil from your yard for them to satisfy the urge to scratch and roll and dirt bathe. This may reduce the noise from the demanding chick, having more room and more things to do.

It IS my first brood of chicks- so I might be overthinking everything but yes, I’m creating different brooders as they are.
First stage is this tote, next is a larger cardboard box with a mesh lid (think refrigerator box on its side). Last brooder will be a plywood set up when they move to the workshop in a month. They will live out there (as the temps hit 70’s outside) for a month before they are moved to the outdoor coop/digs that I’m building. I even use a night vision baby camera and a small radio that plays classical music to keep them relaxed and safe when I’m not around; It’s all about keeping the ladies in comfort and ease

 

[rosemarythyme]

I don’t want to put a “draft” window in too soon before they get older.

You have them indoors, drafts are nonexistent unless you turn a fan on them. A "window" isn't a bad idea for chick entertainment although it does mean a little more lovely chick dander dispersing around your home.

 

[canne50]

I’m trying to not lose my mind with one of my Chicks- she WONT STOP CHIRPING! This isn’t a little peeping like all her brooder mates, this an almost a “help me” peep, but she doesn’t need any kind of help. It’s a “louder than the rest, if a strobe light had a sound it would be this peeping” kind of peep. You know those little plastic chick toys that you hold on your hand that makes an electrical connection and chirps at you? Yeah, sounds almost exactally like that (& just as loud). And she’s been doing it every day since we got her (a week ago). What is wrong? What can I do to make her stop?

A few info bits about her:
-1.5 week old Orpington (as well as her 5 other cage mates )
-she is eating, drinking, snacking, scratching, sleeping and acting just like the others. She’s growing at pace with all the others and getting feathers on schedule and all of them are healthy (no pasty butt or even a sneeze!)
-not being bulled or picked on (she’s actually number 3 in the pecking order, but none of them are actually pushy).
- we have a Brinsea heat plate they sleep under- and we use a dim nightlight in the room for bedtime & we slowly brighten and darken the room with the suns schedule so they have as regular a schedule as we can give them. So she’s not sleep deprived or forced under a 24/7 brooder light (& I also have a night vision baby monitor on them at night and can see they are getting lots of sleep).
- she’s gets just as much love and cuddles as the rest of them, all the attention she wants (we pick her up and hold her when she runs to us, and put her back when she indicates she has had enough). I give them all equal love and one on one time and she’s always happy to be held, but we put her down when she wants it.
- she’s brave- none of them are afraid, but she’s is the first to investigate something new.

So basically, she’s a happy, well cared for chick, but she just won’t stop the noise. And when I’ve taken her to another room for cuddles, it’s amazing how quiet and gentle the brooder sounds with just the other chicks making happy peeps.

I hold her, and give her love thinking she needs extra attention: sometimes that makes her stop, but half the time she keeps peeping the entire time I’m holding her. I’ve tried ignoring it (doesn’t help) I’ve tried giving extra love, that doesn’t help, I’ve even gently reprimanded her in soothing tones and tried shushing her but… she just won’t shut up! I love and adore her, but it’s goes from 7am to 9pm and it’s a lot of non stop strobe light chirping that’s 3 times or more as loud as a normal cheep. I gave them a few mirrors and she likes to stand there, but sometimes it seems to make it worse so I take them away. I give toys and roost bars and she sits on them and plays, but still cheeps. She does it even as she’s eating. She only stops when she’s dead asleep.

Is this normal? And will she grow out of it? Because if she’s going to be like this as an adult, I can’t have that. I’m not keeping any roosters because we can’t have the noise here. Any advice on what to try? I love and adore her, but it’s like having a colicky baby and everyone in the house is going nuts.

Ha! Ha! My own Memories!-not yours!
I had each of my own children (human) go through this. I learned to carry them on my hip as they faced away from me while vacuuming in minutes they usually quieted and fell asleep.
I had one of my new chicks driving me crazy last week. I put some nice nesting material in my workshirt pocket and she snuggled in and slept as I carefully went about my chores.
My little Brownie, RIP, was the same way! Even as she grew up, she’d follow me churring and giving me light pecks about my ankles. Well, up I’d bring onto my palm and she quieted.
Some kids just need to see how big the world is and know we’ve got them secure,
Hopes you enjoy this and Best to you!

 

[SuperC]

UPDATE: since a lot of other posts about this never followed up or updated, I want to give a follow up.

Around week 3 Anne started to calm down a bit. She was still loud, she still went for hours a day, but it started to lessen a bit. By week 4-5 she was still doing it, but not in a “I need something” way but more as just noise. By the time she was a full 5 weeks old she was just as noisy (or not noisy as it were) as the other chicks. She is now 6 weeks old, and like any good mama I can tell them all by sound who is calling for me and when, and she still calls for me when I’m standing right there and she wants love, but she no longer is a strobe light of need and volume. She chirps and peeps in a normal volume. She is however one of my biggest love bugs. She wants to be first into my hands/arms when I open the brooder, she loves to sit on me and snuggle when they have fun run around time and in the end, I think it was just a desperate chick calling for mama & couldn’t handle not being apart for awhile. She must have imprinted on me to a degree that she felt the need to always be on me (& couldn’t calm down for a little bit even when I was holding her- just like a distraut toddler would be). So, not sure if this helps anyone else, but take heart- the noise stops… it might take 4 weeks of endless noise and distractions and cuddles, but it did stop!

 

[Robert Kazlauski]

Thank you so much for your detailed advice. I am happy to say once we put her in the brooder and it heated up to a hot temperarture she quieted down. Since last night she has been great.

 

[SuperC]

Where is your brooder located? Is it by some chance in a busy part of your house where the chicks see you all the time? Have you tried removing yourself from within sight of the brooder to see if this chick stops the loud chirping? Does the loud chirping get even louder when the chick spots you coming within sight of the brooder?

When you've eliminated the possibility of failure-to-thrive syndrome, all chicks having the same rate of growth and level of activity, that leaves the possibility that you possess a chick that is over-demanding of attention.

What is you location? Are you having warm spring weather yet? Perhaps these chicks would benefit by some time spent outdoors on nice days. Many of us begin "field trips" at age two weeks to give chicks a head start on becoming hardened to cooler temps and a chance to augment their immune systems to outdoor pathogens and the joy of tasting tender spring grass.

The brooder is in the kitchen area & I’m a SAHM and my husband works from home and we homeschool in the Dining room, so there is almost always someone passing by or “around” (we are homebodies so we are always making noise somewhere).

The noise doesn’t increase or decrease with our presence or lack of it. There has been times I’ve been out of the house for 2 hours and my husband (who never left his office and is quiet all day) said it never stopped and when I came home didn’t get louder/quieter I’d like to think she’s just extra demanding of attention, but giving extra (or withholding) attention just doesn’t seem to make any difference to her. Girls just got a mouth on her

It’s warm here today, but we have a cold snap and bad weather coming for the next week or so, so maybe after that. Today i took them in the sunroom in a laundry basket (while I was cleaning the brooder) and they seemed fascinated by the sunshine coming in the blinds so maybe I’ll have to take them in there for field trips until it’s nice out.

 

[SuperC]

You are certainly doing a great job. This might sound like a big project, but have you seen pics where people cut big windows in the long sides of the totes and install hardware cloth ??? To me this looks like the best way to use a tote. There was one year that brooded in my garage which is very dark and the chicks seemed to complain more than usual. I think they don't love being down in a dark cave even though they have overhead light. Being on the floor, that overhead arial fear instinct kicks in a lot. For the first 10days my brooder is on the floor in my she shed but it is all hardware cloth frames. So when I feed them and clean up I'm at their level sitting on the floor, reaching in through a door, not over head. Then they move to my coop brooder which is up waist heigh and thats when they really dig it when I show up. I really think that getting them off the floor, maybe by a window and cutting a side door or window could help calm this one down. This excellent article by Azygous changed the way I approach brooders.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...cks-outdoors.71995/?page=7#ams-comment-513472

I’ll have to read that and look into it. I don’t plan any more babies for a long time (we can’t have more than we do and unless we lose some or one goes crazy broody, we have to limit to 4-6 chickens). But I like the higher up method (& I’m also building my coop with a floor that’s almost 3 feet off the ground for easier access and so I’m not always bending over them).

 

[cundare]

Sometimes a bird (not only a chick) will learn that certain behavior elicits a desired response. And then they perform that behavior when they want that response, even if it's not something that most birds would do.

We had one rooster & hen that learned that when they gave a predator call, I'd run right out. Soon they adapted, so that every time they wanted somebody to throw down some food, they'd give a predator call. It took a while to break them of that habit (by simply ignoring predator calls after watching them on video to make sure that they weren't alerting us to a true attack.)

Maybe the chick has learned that, when it makes that noise, you respond in a desired way, even if it's only to provide attention from a person that the chick identifies as a food source, or that the chick has imprinted in some way.