- Mar 24, 2017
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This is my first time posting, though I have read for years! I have raised chickens on and off for years, but last year we really did it up and ordered 25 chicks (received 28 live) and my sister gave me four more, so we had a total of 31. I have never had a flock this large and feel a bit overwhelmed at times! Our girls have been very hardy (we didn't lose one as small chicks), though we did lose one at about 10 weeks old (it had been very hot and she didn't seem to cope). This week has been horrible. We had deer netting over our run and it had gotten weighed down by snow, so we pulled it down with the intentions of replacing it this spring with hardware cloth. We lost one of our hens on Monday to a hawk, so the rest of the girls were locked up this week to avoid another hawk issue (which was not a big deal because it was FREEZING in MA). Then today, I went out to check their food and water and found another one of our hens just dead. We check them three times a day (more when the weather calls for it) and never noticed anyone not feeling well, so I'm not sure what the heck happened. In reading the forums, I see this happens sometimes, but I've never had this happen before! Any thoughts on how to manage and monitor a larger flock would be much appreciated. I can't help but think we must have missed something, but everyone else SEEMS to be fine.