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I have hatched three batches of Seramas, and I haven't had any problems with brooding. Those that hatch all live and stay healthy. I've been getting my eggs mail ordered though, since my own aren't quite old enough yet. The last batch, I got 36 eggs and had 16 hatch. Fertility was good, but I had a lot of early quitters in that batch, but I'm still getting the incubation method tightened down. My better hatches I left them in the carton in the incubator for the first 3 days before I started turning them. By the time I set the 36, I had forgotten about the 3 days in the carton in the bator .. so maybe that is why I had more early quitters. Everything else was the same. Anyway, all 16 are a bit past 1 week old and doing great. My other hatches in April are all still doing well too (one was 14 out of 24 eggs), another was 6 out of 8. I also had a batch that none hatched, but only 4 were fertile to begin with, and 2 of them quit, the last two never pipped. They were set the same time as the 6 of 8 batch ... so not sure what happened. I grind their food for the first two weeks, but the brand of pellets I get (a local milling version of starter) is pretty ground up anyway. It seems like it's 50% powder to 50% pellets. So maybe that is why they do good transitioning to the "not" ground up food. I have mine in a 50 gallon tub, so they have lots of room, and the bedding barely gets dirty because the number of chicks is pretty small compared to the size of the tub. It makes it easy to spot clean too. Also, as soon as they are big enough, I have my water up on bricks, with room for the chicks to hop up on the bricks to get their drink so it stays clean. Oh, I just put the heat lamp at a height where everyone looks comfy. Right now it's over 95 - 100 during the day, so I just have the light on at night, and they don't need it during the day (they're on the back porch in the brooder).
Anyway, maybe it's the grinding the food thing, and maybe if you grind some of it but not all to transition them to regular food?
