Chick dying

[Baby-chicken raising]

Im really sorry dont mean this harshly dont know if u are commercial and even ig u are tht last photo is not good there is no space they all climbing on top of each other i think thats a big part of the problem imo wheres their quality of life being stuck to each other overcrowded and in a barn?
Sam x

Yes you are right this is not good was just showing the problems we were having we will move chicks on perches at night to break this habit of piling.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Where are you located in the world?

 

[Sammi_0411]

Yes you are right this is not good was just showing the problems we were having we will move chicks on perches at night to break this habit of piling.

I didnt mean to sound so harsh but yes improvements need to be made we all learning no matter hoe long we had poultry i respect that you are taking our advice in stride just please they need a lot more room and daylight if poss?
Sam

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

Instead of shutting them out of the brooder rooms, I would suggest to clean them more often and thus provide dry bedding.

What exactly are you feeding them? Do they have granite grit available at all times?

They are feed brooder feed can't tell you right now what exactly is in but we are going to add grit to their diet. They are too old for brooder rooms and they will sleep on perches from now on.

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

Where are you located in the world?

Located in Maryland we are having a cold winter

 

[LaFleche]

I was reading about this today they have roost but are prone to sleeping in brooders. We lost another 20 last night when we checked on them they were very crowded. What we will change is we are going to begin to feed them before sunset and move them to perches so they can learn where to sleep I'll keep updates thanks for the advice.

• They need to have the feed available at all times. At least 18% protein.
• You can feed them some additional corn in the evening to help keep them warm at night.
• Provide granite grit and oyster shells at all times.
• There needs to be multi vitamin and electrolyte additives in their drinking water.
• And by what I can see from the pictures you provided, they crowd in the brooder space to get some warmth, so it is vital to provide more heat lamps/heat sources for the underfed birds to survive.
• The big hall is much too dark and needs to be lit up at least during day time.
• They need wooden perches as in very cold weather they will freeze to metal perches.

 

[Baby-chicken raising]

How are they being fed? How many birds per feeder? Same with water. Are they crushing each other to get to the food? They look way over crowded. Do they get any natural light? What kind of ventilation do they have? Can you realistically put 800 birds on perches at night? What USDA guidelines are you following for what appears to commercial raising?

Currently we are dumping buckets of their feed in long feed chain they are not crushing each other when feed or watered. They looked over crowded in picture because they all chose to sleep in a single brooder room but they have entire barn too run about and when fully grown they will have outside access. They have natural and artificial light. The ventilation is ok in barn but not as well in brooder rooms. We have installed fans and vents in brooder rooms to help ventilate. We have enough help to transfer birds to perches. At night birds are a lot calmer so we can move them to perches a lot easier. We are organic farm on our first years so we are still learning. I have read you must feed each bird more for every degree below freezing so we made that change and are feeding them before sunset and in morning. Thank you

 

[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.