Loosing Baby Chicks... Help..

[BridleHouse]

We are new to having our own baby chicks... we bought them from our local feed store when they were about a day old, however I believe that some of them were a little older because they already had a few feathers on the tips of their wings. We bought 14 chicks and have now have lost 4 of them... The first one that we lost was only 72 hours after bringing them home.

Here is the set up of our brooding area... We purchased a new coop that is actually a fairly common one...

This is a picture of the design of the coop that we purchased and currently have set up in our living room as we live in a very cold area that is not suitable for our chicks to be outside yet... I have the opening to the ramp closed of with cardboard and inside the hutch we have wood shaving on top of cardboard and a few piece of newspaper. I have been replacing all of the bedding every other day and removing soiled bedding when I fill up their feeder and waterer twice daily. I have a 60 watt light bulb in a clamp light attached to the top of the Hutch area... with this being said, we do not have the roof installed on the large portion of the coop so that we may reach in the area and clip the light to the side panel.

We are feeding the chicks medicated crumble food and when we add more food of water we rinse the containers out with a dish detergent and rinse extensively. So I am feeling like we have lost quite a few chicks in the past 3 weeks for what i would consider very attentive care. The second chick we noticed was acting "drunk like" and had a swollen craw, we tried to hydrate her with a small syringe and a warm washcloth, however she only made it a few hours... Our third chick broke her neck in between the 2nd and 3rd week when we had a few chicks that seemed twice the size of some of the others and they all started playing more aggressively.

The fourth chick is the one that I am the most concerned about. We were gone for the day and when we got home the lil chick had very swollen eyes and had her beek open as if she was trying to find the water, food or struggling to breathe. We immediately took her out of the pen and tried as it suggested on many posts to rinse her eyes with a saline solution as well as drip water into her beek... Then I quickly changed the bedding and scrubbed the removable plastic pan with dish soap and a few tablespoons of bleach.. I let it sit for a min and rinsed throughly with the garden hose for a few mins to make sure that all the chemicals had been removed. I then let it air dry before putting the complete bedding system back down.

Breed info: We decided to get a variety of breeds that are considered dual purpose... we started out with
2 Americanas
2 Rhode Island Reds
2 Marans
2 Barred Rocks
1 Black Astralorp
3 Golden Buffs
2 silver laced wyandottes

Our 1st loss was a maran, 2nd was a barred rock, 3rd silver laced wyandotte and 4th was a golden buff orpington

I just wanted to see if there was anything else that I could do to help keep my remaining chicks alive?!?! I called our vet and he is setting some antibiotics out in his mailbox for us to pick up tonight and put in their water... but I just was curious to see whether our chick loses were anything that was preventable or not?!?! One last factoid about our set up is that our temp seems to be perfect the chicks are not too close or too far away from the light...

Please help!

Thanks

Sarah

 

[leadwolf1]

First off, what was the temperature inside the brooder? At this point, there should be a warm spot inside that brooder that reaches 80 degrees. I'm not sure that your 60 W bulb was enough to keep them warm and that would cause fatalities.

The only other thing I can think of is to give them vitamins/electrolytes to try and give them a boost. The last chick sounds like a respiratory things and it will take antibiotics to cure. You might want to sprinkle some probiotics over their food to help reestablish their good bacteria.

What size is the coop you are talking about? For 14 chickens you would need 56 square feet of room....once they are grown.

I'm just throwing some thoughts out, kind of trying to brainstorm to try and get to the bottom of this problem so that the rest of your chicks will grow up healthy.

 

[BridleHouse]

Thanks for the quick response..

Temperature: the ambient air temp inside my house is 70 degrees and the 60 watt light bulb generates a warmer area around 85 right under the light and closer to 75 around the corners of the box. I have raised the light in the last week to decrease the temp a little bit as they have grown, the first two weeks we had the chicks we were advised to have the temp under the light closer to 90 and the temp on the corners closer to 80... Once the chicks are older they will go in a very large area in our backyard that is around 400 sq ft of run and 75 sq ft of warm house that they will share with our 10 grown layers... Currently our full grown hens have no problems and seem very happy, honestly our hens have a very pampered life right now with perches, a sandbox, swings, a small pond (for the two ducks that cohabit the area), we spread a little bit of scratch out for them and keep their feeder full of the layer formula with a small dish of the oyster calcium supplement ...

It's just the chicks that are inside for the time being as we have a late spring/ summer for instance this week is was in the 60-70 during the day and 30-40 at night, but today a storm front came in and we actually got an 1inch of snow that melted right away and then some rain into the evening... We are in the mountains of Colorado (actually in a small ski town)...

I just picked up the "SulfadiVed Soluble Powder" that the vet left in his mailbox for us to pick up after hours, so i will fill their next water refill up with the medicated water... before I left for the vet I found a vitamin/ electrolyte formula consisting of 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 4 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 of a vitamin B tablet dissolved in a quart of water... they drank about half of it in 2 hours... so I was hoping that it may help with perking up our remaining chicks... None of the other chicks currently seem to be exhibiting any swelling in their faces or any other symptoms... I guess I am just becoming a little paranoid since our other chicks seemed to become ill so quickly without warning...

The box size for the chicks is 4ft long x 2 1/2 wide and 3ft deep... currently there are only 10 chicks in that area and they seem to have plenty of room...

Let me know if I can help provide any other info... thanks you again for the help!