posted 5 years ago
This is a mystery! Usually, if a chick fails to thrive, it simply dies, and usually looks and acts sick. That may still happen.
So long as you make sure the others don't out-compete it for its share of feed, and you could consider giving it a little energy dense food in between the other feedings for a few days to see how it responds, you can wait a little longer.
There is a good chance that it will never catch up to its hatch-mates, so you need to start thinking about why you wanted chickens and whether there will be a place for an unproductive or under-performing staff member? It might be great for getting bugs out of small spots, but only lay banty-sized eggs if it lays at all, for example. If somehow it's digestive tract is damaged, the damage will likely be permanent, and it may or may not die spontaneously. Being a "cross", there's always the possibility that you just got some weird gene thing happening (we have human dwarfs after all) and you will have the equivalent of a banty. Banty's have a reputation for having "attitude" far beyond what their size would suggest, so I will continue to suggest you wait and see, but do some thinking in the meantime.