How much loss is normal when raising chicks?

[Ariel301]

I am wondering how many losses are normal when raising chicks. Say, what percentage you lose between hatch/arrival from the hatchery (or wherever) to point of lay. We have not been doing so well with our chicks and I don't remember it being so hard to keep them alive when I had chickens in the past.

So far:
We bought six adult birds. Lost 4 to predation when they escaped or something got inside the coop.
Incubated 2 dozen eggs. Two days before hatching, the incubator went crazy and killed all of them because it went up to 120 degrees all by itself.
Ordered 25 assorted bantams from a hatchery. Got 28, 13 of them died within four days of mysterious illness that looked heart problems.
The hatchery replaced the dead bantams, plus a few extra packing peanut roosters. We've lost approximately 8 more, to various things--mystery deaths where we just find them dead after they were fine an hour before, drowning in 1/8 inch of YOGURT on a plate, severe pasty butt/constipation when they went outside for the first time and stuffed themselves with dirt and sand, two I accidentally stepped on, and one the other chicks trampled to death trying to steal a bug it was eating--they killed it before I could manage to get it out from under them.

This has been pretty discouraging.

That seems way too much loss to me. Do those of you who raise both bantams and standard size notice that bantams die more often than the bigger chicks? We have lost tons of our bantam chicks, but none of those darn roosters have had a single problem. They didn't even use their heat lamp from day 1, while the 3 week old bantams are still huddling under it.

 

[twentynine]

Sounds to me like you have been very unlucky.

One bit of advice------ keep it simple.

Water and chick starter for feed.

Why yogurt? Chick starter gives'em everything they need.

Why are they running loose where you can step on them? Keep'em in the brooder where they are contained and protected.

Why are they outside? Read above.

Sounds to me like all those loses could have been avoided, just by keeping them in the brooder, with water and chick starter.

Mysterious illness? Heaven only knows.

In all the years I have ordered chicks I have lost a few here and there. Most all the time you will lose a few, some are just plain weak. Last year I lost two out of ten, to rodent predation. But I have also ordered as many as 100 chicks and lost one or two. Knock on wood I have never had a mass illness strike my chicks.