A hatchling is the second stage in a dragon's life cycle. They can only be acquired by successfully hatching an egg, finding them on the Abandoned Page or having one traded or given to you.
Just like its egg stage, if a hatchling receives too many views in a short amount of time, it will become sick, and it will die if it keeps acquiring a lot of views. This sickness can be cured by hiding the hatchling for a specific period of time. Usually, 24 hours is recommended, although shorter healing times have been reported. The closer to 0 the hatchling's timer is, the smaller the odds of it getting sick from large amounts of views.
When the hatchling is near maturing into an Adult, it will become a Mature Hatchling, but this will not reset its death timer. A hatchling becomes a Mature Hatchling when the death timer falls to around 5½ - 4 days. Hatchlings may be frozen before or after growing into a Mature Hatchling. If frozen before, they will remain as a standard Hatchling on the user's scroll- in the past, this was not the case and the hatchlings would mature despite being frozen. A hatchling can be frozen while it is still sick- the sickness message will remain displayed for some time after but eventually disappears and the hatchling is at no risk from the sickness while having been frozen.
Whilst growing up, hatchlings can be named, abandoned, traded, and killed but cannot be given a description unless frozen or allowed to grow up into an adult. If a hatchling is named, it cannot be abandoned or traded until the name is removed. Likewise, whilst still growing, hatchlings cannot be released; they must be frozen first in order to do so.
Rarely, the player can fail to abandon a hatchling, resulting in the text, "You try to leash the hatchling to a tree trunk outside a nearby cave, but it chews through the rope and begins to follow you."