ChicksChick16
In the Brooder
Hey, all. We have raised meat chicks for about 4 years now. They are located at a friend's farm. We received 125 Cornish Rock chicks last Wednesday (a week ago today), a full day earlier than we had been told. My friend was out of town and didn't have a container ready for them, so he had us put them into a rabbit hutch. We gave them regular starter chick feed and he had a 3-gallon waterer (with electrolytes) in there as well. We put Spanish moss down as bedding to keep them from getting stuck in the bottom of the hutch and to help keep them warm. My 11-year-old daughter loves chicks, so we brought 5 home to start with. The next day when I went to check on them, five looked like they had bathed in the waterer and had gunk caked all over them (not sure if it was just food or a mix of food and poop) and so I brought them home as well. I pulled two dead chicks out of the hutch, figuring they had either gotten chilled or trampled. Over the course of the last week, all five of the sick ones we brought home have died, as have 3 more there. My daughter was just holding the biggest chick when it suddenly chipped like crazy, started flopping its head around, and looked like it had some kind of seizure and just dropped dead. Any ideas? Is this just the average loss rate of meat chicks? We got them from Mount Healthy. Thanks for any insight.
