I've seen some pretty flat crops but I've never seen a completely empty crop except for maybe on a brand-new hatchling. It's possible that it's normal to have a little color there because the crop has developed somewhat since the baby hatched, or maybe the body naturally retains a tiny bit of food there to help protect the tissues from digestive acids or whatnot. FWIW here's one of Susanne's collages showing a brand new hatchling that has never been fed:


The crop looks completely pink. But it doesn't sound like anything abnormal is happening with your baby. His crop is emptying out significantly and my guess as a person who doesn't know very much about it is that he's fine. It would be abnormal if the food was moving out very slowly or not moving at all.

It's my understanding that the abdominal bulk is mostly from the gizzard, which is where the food goes after it leaves the crop. This will get bulkier when your baby starts processing food through the crop at a faster rate. Here's another picture of some of my babies. Look at the two smallest chicks at the end of the line. The smallest one is 1 day old and the bigger one is 3 days old. You can see that the crop of the older one is bigger compared to the size of his head and his lower belly has bigger proportions too.

Made an appointment with the vet, but she called me and we talked for a while and she doesn't think he needs to be seen. She said it sounds like he had a slow start because of the rough hatch and chilling early on, but he'll catch up now that he's putting on weight.

As of 10AM he weighs 6 grams. Improvement!

Congrats!!

Your vet sounds right to me. With human babies, if they have some kind of problem early on it slows down their development, and I would expect birds and other animals to be the same. They have to recover from the initial problem before they can go full speed ahead on their growth and development.

It's relieving.

Someone is starting to learn how to make that "static" begging noise. His right eye is juuuuuust starting to crack open.

You are making SOO much progress!!

You are doing a wonderful job, if this baby makes it, which seems likely, you will be his mom destined to care for a truly velcro bird
Great thread, it's like a daily novel unfolding a little bit every day

Someday you will be very tired of hearing the static noise. Trust me. But right now it's a wonderful indicator of his ongoing development.

It's already grating a bit--between lack of sleep, my dog, and the chick my nerves are pretty frayed atm. (One of our dogs is very elderly and started "sundowning" last year, meaning he gets confused at sunset. He barks and growls at walls and shadows and tears around the house). Between the dog barking and the chick deciding he didn't get enough formula at that last feeding...it's a little noisy. I think the chick can hear the dog, because he jerks a little every bark.

My mom is convinced it's a girl and wants to name her Daisy, which I am...no. I don't like flower or cutesy names very much.

The Trekkie in me wants to name him/her Kahless, but I somehow don't see that flying. We've fought over what to name every single bird as we have vastly different tastes in names.

Lol you can't tell the sex of the baby at 5-6 days old. You were thinking of names that meant strong or strength, right? I can look for names. What type of language would you prefer?