General Question,how many % wise of your Flocks sarvive??

[ThePolishPrincess]

We've had our flock for almost two years, inluding 4 roos, 10 hens (our poor ratio), and two ducks. Only lost one, due to the fact that I kept my sick roo downstairs with a feeding cup and found him dead with his head jammed in the thing the next day. Imagine loosing your first one like that.

It was a horrifying few weeks.

Otherwise, we've had NO other casualties and are very pleased. Surrounded by foxes, coyoties, hawks, bears, our nieghbor's 20-something feral cats, dogs, etc...

We keep our flock in the enlosed run and coop with wire-netting covering the run in the winter. In the spring, summer and fall, they are let out to free range at around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. while I'm outside and keeping an eye out on them.

Our flock is a mix of big, little, exhibition, dual-purpose, or even meat fowl. All are pets and are going to be left alone until they die by natural causes unless someone is in pain.

It's time consuming, but the results are unbelievable!

 

[Dustoff79]

I have been very lucky, i purchased 25 pullets from McMurry and they arrived 2 Nov 08, All 25 are healthy, 1 turned out to be a rooster, and one I am still not sure of. Guess I need to take a picture and ask you smarter folks. I did have a scare one evening. I went into the coop I built, and found one hanging upside down from the light pull string. I had installed three roosts and did not even think of the rafters. there was not much space and I had installed a pullstring light near one of the rafters. Well they decided higher is better and crammed themselves on to the rafters. I think that one got the string wrapped around her leg, and either got knocked or nugged of the rafter. I cut off the string and she was fine.

 

[swampwander]

Almost two years now since we jumped into this. We lost one chick. However, we gave a good portion of that initial flock to DSD who wanted layers. She has managed to loose a lot. As in hatch 6 chicks, one makes it to adulthood. She started with 6 hens and one roo, that jumped to 10 hens and one roo, now she's down to 4 hens and the same roo. She lets them roam free in the neighborhood and she lives in a poor built up rural area. Lots and lots of loose dogs.

 

[cottagegarden]

I was reading The Chicken Health Handbook in the car yesterday and my Dh said, "With as many things that can go wrong we are lucky we havent lost any-that book makes it seem like they are really fragile." He is in the process of becoming a Poultry Tech, though for our club so, we are a little nutty about safety and biosecurity. You do what you can, you prevent what you can, you learn along the way. Loss comes with the territory. Thank goodness for the kind folks who post information on here and help members having problems, I can only guess it has saved many birdies.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Up until about three years ago, I didn't loose too many chicks or chickens. I usually would get about three or four chicks and rarely did one die for whatever reason. About three years ago a stray dog killed off our whole flock of about 17 chickens. We have been rebuilding the flock since then. Last spring we added about 27 chicks to our small flock of 5. Out of those chicks we now have 3 roosters and 4 hens. Nearly all them died of marek's even though they were immunized. We lost some of the older birds to marek's also. Our puppy killed one hen. One chick died from an injury and we gave two chicks away to kids who wanted them. We gave one hen to our neighbor since our primary rooster kept attacking her and she was becoming beligerent to two of the other hens.
We are hoping that our chickens now have developed an immunity to the strain of marek's that killed the rest and we'll try again to build up our flock. It'll be rough raising all those babies again