Chick dying

[RosemaryDuck]

We do believe they were crushed from other chicks. We will begin to feed them before sunset so they have food burning in their stomach to keep them warm. We will also put them on perches during night so they will learn where to sleep. What I forgot to mention is that they are currently 3 weeks behind on body weight. This could be a factor of why they are cold. The birds seem healthy though so we are increasing food. Thank youView attachment 2529741View attachment 2529748

You're losing birds because they physically have nowhere to even turn around. They are crushing each other. This is insane. Even commerical environments have more room then this. These poor birds are literally being smashed up against the walls in this photo.

 

[LaFleche]

They have plenty of water access. There is no draft but barn is somewhat cold but not cold enough to worry about they should be able to withstand it. They have natural light shining through roof and poultry light on timers that comes on. The birds are three weeks behind on body weight which I forgot to mention. The changes we are making is to feed them more and feed them before sun set so food can burn in their stomachs to keep them warm. We also will move them to perches at night to teach them where to sleep.

In addition to proper lighting, this barn needs a thick layer of bedding such as wood shavings. And provide some dustbaths too.

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

You're losing birds because they physically have nowhere to even turn around. They are crushing each other. This is insane. Even commerical environments have more room then this. These poor birds are literally being smashed up against the walls in this photo.

Yes they chose to sleep there we do feel bad for them. They have entire barn they run around in during day. They have plenty of food and water access. They will even have outdoor space when fully grown. We don't raise our birds in any way we wouldn't like ourselves. We are going to move them from crowded rooms to spacious perches that they already had available to them. They just have not learned to use perches yet. Thanks you

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

And how do you prevent predators from getting in or sneaking around and causing them to panic? Is the barn dark at night?

Please, provide some pictures of you entire set up and some more information about where you live, country, climate etc.

No predators can get in or ever have the birds aren't stressed from this theory.

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

We now have a little over 800 chicks we had 1200 and keep randomly loosing chicks. They are outside of brooder rooms but still have access to brooder rooms to go in and out. They have a entire layer barn for their space to run around in. They are 17 weeks old and we have just found 50 dead in different piles of chicks. The Layer barn has its sides boarded up so chicks don’t get to cold but if they are getting to cold why would they die a random cold night. We just decided to shut access to brooder rooms after the 50 died because they peck around in their allot and there is a lot of waste in rooms. We also give them 4 buckets of feed in morning and 3 in evening a bucket weight is 25 pounds. Could they be falling malnourished, sick from pecking around in brooder rooms, just cold, or something else. How do I figure this out? Thanks for reading and helping me.

Thanks everyone for the concerns and help. If you saw the pictures you may think we have them in close quarters on purpose but the chicks were just deciding they all wanted to sleep in one place. They have an entire barn which is plenty of space that they run around in during the day. They will even have outside space when grown to full size. To fix the overcrowding problems we decided we will start transferring chicks to perches at night. We will also feed them more and feed them before sunset so food can burn in their belly at night keeping them warm.

 

[Mellowmalt]

lol I adore chickens guys but they are stupid, they have all that space and they are crushing each other to death.
Please enlighten me what you would call that. Don't want to start an argument but out of all the pets I've had chickens really are quite dim. Adds to their attraction for me, simple life, simple animals, they eat sleep, lay an egg and that's about all a chicken will do in its lifetime. Maybe some will win some prizes in contests but not for their math skills

We as the owners have to do all the thinking to keep them safe from predators, keep them warm at night, stop them crushing each other, sometimes my chickens won't figure out where the waterer is, they rely on us for food and for cleaning. They depend on us so nothing against chickens, I was just trying to point out they do stupid things sometimes.

 

[Mamatomany123]

Can I ask why you got so many at one time? Also,17 weeks is plenty big enough to be outside. I let mine out on warm days at 5 weeks old. If it's cold then I wait until around 8-9 weeks. Some of my birds were already laying by 17 weeks.

 

[rosemarythyme]

It's almost certainly crushing related deaths. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of is to physically separate them out into much smaller groups, so they can't pile up 100s at a time. Like we're talking pods of maybe 20-25 birds. But I don't know anything about how commercial farms are set up (really that's what this is). My guess is, they just calculate in a certain amount of loss due to crushing (from the few videos I've seen employees go through daily and simply throw away dead birds each day).