If disaster should befall the larger chick the parent can switch to feeding the youngest and it will exhibit a constant growth curve from the day of active feeding. From Wikipedia
Depends, a repo stays on credit for 7 years, and a bankruptcy stays for 11 years, after you have paid off a debt and they have received payment it should be taken of immediately, but you may want to get a free credit report and check and if it is still there call them and ask them about it.
I meant to add also that 7 years from your DFD date, it will fall off of your credit report. Paying a collection in full does not restart this date; it will only bring the collection's activity date current which can sometimes hurt your score. Paid off debt always looks better to manual reviews/reconsiderations for lines of credit.