How Common is it Lose a Chick?

Quote:The truth is, anything can happen and there's no telling when. We initially got 14 day old chicks from My Pet Chicken and they all made it home perfectly well and happy! Several days later we lost one to an unfortunate feeder incident. Several weeks later we lost one to a hawk (who reached in through the bottom of the run and pulled her half way out through the chicken wire. It was awful.). Several months later, two of the remaining 12 turned out to be roos (sexing at the hatcheries only being 90%).

The short answer is, go ahead and get nine. You never know. Besides, chicken math dictates that you'll have lots more by the end of the year anyway! Enjoy!

 

All of my first 6 TSC chicks made it to point of lay (or butcher size) and they are all with me today except the roo that we ate. I am of the opinion that buying chicks from the feedstore results in the feed store suffering shipping losses instead of you, but who really knows.

The next group I brooded was also very healthy, but someone STOLE 3 of them (so chicken math dictates that I purchased 4 replacements) and all of those made it, the pullets are with me today.

The next groups I brooded one escaped from the brooder and died trying to get back in (probably chilled) but I don't remember any other losses.

However, I have lost several of my current "brooder group" - one I had to cull seemed like it had failure to thrive, next morning there was a dead chick in the pen mystery-death, a few overheated because I wasn't expecting it to top 90*F all of a sudden like it did- my fault on that one, one flew over the fence to the neighbor's dog, and one somehow got trapped and died, we had no known sicknesses and only the overheating thing could have een avoided - despite my usually good success with chicks I had a lot of unfortunate losses with this group.

 

The "responsible" answer is: death rate varies. I read that you can expect to lose about 10% of your day old chicks that are shipped... and then I figured since it was my first time I'd better up that to 25% - all 31 I got ended up surviving, they'll be 12 weeks old Friday. If you got 8 and 1-2 died you'd still be in your "6 to 8" area with room to add more if you went to a swap or something.

Still being responsible: can you house extra adult chickens with no problem on space or housing authority restrictions if they all survive?

Now being irresponsible: Get as many as you want. No use in putting off chicken math. Learn about it as soon as possible so you can ignore the phenomena.

 

I assumed I'd lose one and get maybe one roo. So I ordered eight to get six. So far, they all survived and I don't THINK any are roos (time will tell). So add a few for 'padding' just be prepared with room for more or rehoming plans just in case.

 

Quote:Your luck sounds like mine at the moment I can feel your pain! I had some stellar hatches/shipments...and then had one where I felt like I was constantly losing one to one thing or another.

My response to possibly losing a few is to get 3 for every 1 that I want to end up with. So...at the moment, I have 84 (I THINK!). 12 (ish) are for sale. Some are potential breeding stock that I don't know if I will keep...and the rest are for the laying flock. All in all, I will still end up with approximately 4x the original number of chickens that I intended to have

 

Sounds like you should have plenty of room.

 

Murphy's Law of Chicken Math demands that if you get more to cover possible losses, you won't have any losses. However, if you do not get extra, you WILL have losses and the less you can afford them in time/space/cash, the heavier losses you will have.
Really... it's a corallary of Chicken Math. Check the text book!

 

you really shouldn't double post topics like that in my opinion if you feel you didnt get the anwser you were looking for just bump the thread every so often.