Is owning a poultry business really this hard?!

[JADOUBLELFARM]

I have had chickens for 20 years! My family has always had them for meat and eggs. We have mainly had heritage breeds.
I decided in August I was going to start raising and breeding poultry. I have Orpington's, silkies, Polish, Wyandotte's, Cochins, Seabrights and ameruacana.
I have lost 10% or more of my flock on regular basis. It seems there is always something going wrong. I bought vaccines hoping that would change my luck but that hasn't seemed to help either. Like today some how my babies, who are in my heated garage got lice, my WCB Polish suddenly is unable to stand, I found an orpington hen lathargic laying on the ground out side, and a cochin w a swollen eye. In the last week I have had 3 birds die all in different areas (cooped seperate) and had to cull 1.
As stated above I have chickens for quit awhile and never had any of the issues I have had. Am I doing something wrong or is this just part of running a poultry business?

 

[N F C]

Welcome to BYC!

Having had a small business in the past, I learned to expect losses as well as (hopefully) some gains...that's the nature of a business. When you try to operate a business with live animals, those losses are going to include deaths, injuries and illness. That's not much comfort I know, just trying to point out that any business is a gamble and it is hard to grow one.

You may be able to get some help for your injured and sick birds here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/10/emergencies-diseases-injuries-and-cures

Hope things get better for you, good luck.

 

[Naser]

If you keep hens for eggs and meat, look what breeds you should keep. you have some ornamental breeds.

 

[pdirt]

What part of the country (world) are you in? There is some avian flu going around in some parts of the US and Canada right now.

The only way to know why your chickens died would be to send them in for a necropsy. Do a search on BYC here about it, there are instructions on how to prepare them properly to ship them for necropsy. Often universities with an ag department will have testing abilities for low cost. The expensive part is in shipping them, because they usually need to be shipped overnight.