PLEASE HELP!!! UPDATE: 12 dead keets in 24 hours! Only 4 of 17 left!!

[000]

As a gift my grandparents ordered me 17 Guinea Foul keets. They were one day shipped to our local post office and we picked them up a few hours after they arrived there. They all looked super healthy but one that was laying on it's side and was clearly not going to make it. It died later that afternoon. This morning I woke up and found three dead and one on the verge on death. When I got home this afternoon 3 more were dead and 2 have died in the last half hour. 4 of the remaining don't look like they will make it. So that leave 4 healthy looking chicks left. I have raised chickens for the last 5 years and have never seen anything like this. They have food, electrolyte water, a heat lamp, and a towel over the shavings so they don't aspirate it whole laying down. What can I do? Could they have picked up some kind of disease in transit? Could temperature flexuation from shipping be killing them? PLEASE help me solve this and keep the last ones alive!
Thank you!

-G

UPDATE: There is only 5 left now and one of them is drifting!!! HELP!

 

[casportpony]

Sorry for your losses. Can you post a picture of them in the brooder?

-Kathy

 

[000]

UPDATE: Unfortunatly, one more died

 

[casportpony]

Can you show us a picture of the setup?

-Kathy

 

[000]

It's the exact same brooding system that I have had for the hundred+ chicks that I have raised over the years, so that is of no concern at all. I think that the problem occured at some point during shipping... They hatched the 7th and didn't get here till yesterday at 3 o'clock, the 1st. So maybe they were in the mail for too long and got too cold or died of starvation. But I gave heat and food when they got here, so I'm not sure.

 

[Little Fuzzy]

Thats why I am afraid to buy thru the mail. It sounds like shipping stress to me. Sounds like your doing everything you can do, so sorry.

 

[casportpony]

Ask for a refund.

-Kathy

 

[000]

UPDATE: I lost one more of the poor babies, so we only have 4 remaining

I don't even know where they are from because they were a gift... I'm gonna ask them so I can complain to the hatchery. 4 living out of 17 is ridiculous and tremendously sad. I have mail ordered once before but it was from Saphire Farms, if you know what that is, you know that they have everything they do down to a science and all the chicks lived to adulthood.

-G

 

[casportpony]

UPDATE: I lost one more of the poor babies, so we only have 4 remaining

I don't even know where they  are from because they were a gift... I'm gonna ask them so I can complain to the hatchery. 4 living out of 17 is ridiculous and tremendously sad. I have mail ordered once before but it was from Saphire Farms, if you know what that is, you know that they have everything they do down to a science and all the chicks lived to adulthood. 

-G

No shipping label on the box they came in? Who picked the up at the post office?

-Kathy

 

[DwayneNLiz]

SO they were not purchased as day olds and shipped same day as hatched?
and if they were shipped overnight they would have had at least $50 insurance through the USPS