1st CX - 3 dead in 3 weeks

[delisha]

sorry you are having problems with your Cornish. Put the chicks in the tractor during the day when the sun is out and back in the garage at night. Nothing wrong with what you are feeding, they just do not have the room to burn off all of that protein. When they weather improves, leave them out. They need sun, air, and more room to move. Cornish are weather sensitive so I understand why you are leaving them in the garage. It sounds like you are doing nothing wrong..and the weather is preventing you from moving them into a better area permanently.

 

[redsoxs]

I agree with the above posts. For all their genetic engineering,or perhaps because of it, Cornish chicks seem to be the most fragile things - far more touchy than other breeds - super sensitive to almost everything. Good luck to you and your flock!

 

[SunnysMama]

sorry you are having problems with your Cornish. Put the chicks in the tractor during the day when the sun is out and back in the garage at night. Nothing wrong with what you are feeding, they just do not have the room to burn off all of that protein. When they weather improves, leave them out. They need sun, air, and more room to move. Cornish are weather sensitive so I understand why you are leaving them in the garage. It sounds like you are doing nothing wrong..and the weather is preventing you from moving them into a better area permanently.

I respectfully disagree with this. Extremely sensitive to heat but not so much with the cold. It is 29 degrees in my chicken coop right now, which is where the brooder is located and all of my chicks are happily running around instead of all huddled under the heat lamp. They will be 2 weeks old tomorrow.

My batch last year went outside when they were 3 weeks old and I put a heatlamp in the tractor, where I thought they would sleep but they decided they wanted to sleep outside under the shade board. They were very happy birds!

Everyone's opinion is different when it comes to protein. Do they need that high of a protein level?? I don't think they do. I have raised close to 200 CX on 18% protein and have lost one bird due to reasons unknown. I was feeding them and she just flipped.

 

[Island Roo]

Hummingbird - I can't see anything wrong with what your doing. (I'll be starting my 4th batch next week)

I think many of the recommendations for broilers come from the way broiler barns operate with the goal to maximize growth in a controlled environment.

My cx start on 20% then go to 17% after a couple of weeks. I'll never do broilers again without fermenting the feed.

They start at about 85 degrees in the brooder but I don't monitor the temperature too closely after the first couple of days. I just remove heat at the rate where the chicks are comfortable - much faster than the prescribed rate.

Also - different hatcherys have different strains of broiler.

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

Thanks everyone for all the information. I turned off the heat lamp all together last night and they did fine without it overnight in the garage, just like you predicted. I'm going to try to assemble my larger, 7'X3' brooder that I used with my FRs last summer. I took it appart when we were evacuating the fire and I hope it has all the parts. This should give them some more room until the weather turns and I can move them outdoors. It snowed last night but should be in the 40s today. However, this week's forcast shows highs in the low high 30s and low 40s but the predicted low of 12 degrees on Tuesday and 7 degrees on Wednesday sound like a way to loose all of them so I figure they have another week inside. Do you agree?

 

[SunnysMama]

Are they fully feathered? If they are they should be fine to go outside. My main coop is a Wood's open air coop and all of my girls did just fine all winter even with two weeks of deep freeze weather. My rooster and a couple of the other girls got their combs a little frost bit but they are all fine!! I would move them to the tractor with a small watt bulb just to start getting them acclimated. That's just me though and you have to ultimately do what you can live with.

I live in SE Idaho so our weather is very similar. Is your tractor a Salatin style tractor?

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

Here's my chicken tractor. It is actually a 18 year old mini-van dragging a 6'X12' portable run. Last summer I the Freedom Rangers learned to go up the ramp into the van at night and I'd close the hatch. I the morning, I'd start up the van, move the whole thing about 12 feet, open the hatch and let them all out again. I don't know if the CX can handle the ramp. I could manually stuff them in the van at night (did that in the begining with the FRs) or whether I should just rig some sort of shelter in the run itself. We have a lot of serious predators in the Colorado mountains and the van always felt much more secure than the tractor.






In the meanwhile, I just combined two big brooders in the garage and my 7 remaining CX have about a 3X12 space instead of a a 3X6 space. Amazing what you can do with zip ties, bungie cords and duct tape as long as you aren't really concerned with how it looks.

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

Are they fully feathered? If they are they should be fine to go outside...

I admit that I'm not sure exactly what fully featherd means. All the yellow fluff is gone, replace by white feathers. However, there still seems to be a lot of pink showing through the feathers. Since I've never raised CX before and don't know what fully feathered looks like I could use some advice here. I can tell you they don't look as sleek and nice as my 2 year old White Plymouth Rock Hen.

 

[SunnysMama]

OMG...your tractor is too cool!! They probably won't go up the ramp but they may surprise you!! I think they will be fine outside.

My batch last year was fed fermented feed and allowed to free range and they had the most beautiful feathers. I don't know what it is about fermented feed that makes their feathers so soft!! It was nice not having poopy butts, too!

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

OMG...your tractor is too cool!!

Thanks, it was a lifesaver, really, when we had to evacuate all those chickens from the fire. We just disconnected the pen and drove away. Here's a thread on the making of it if you're interested.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/675624/mini-van-coop-fire-evacuation-mobile-predator-break-in

It actually also shows the PVC pipe and chicken netting brooder that I just attached to another brooder to make a larger, indoor run for my CX. I have to repair and reinforce the door on the mobile run as well as do some re-engineering on the way the run attaches to the mini-van mobile-coop too before I fire it up for the summer. The cold weather has been my excuse not to have it done already.