We just hatched 22 chicks - all healthy - this past Sun. & Mon. a.m. We put them in our home made brooder (which we've used successfully MANY times before) and all has been well for the yesterday & today. At 5:00 my husband looked at them and they were all doing fine. By 8:00 this evening, every last one of them has died or is in the process of dying now. We are totally baffled. They haven't been wet, cold, hot, etc. They've had all eaten food and drank water. This is a first for us... usually we might have one or two that don't make it, but we've never had the whole flock die in a matter of about 2 hours. Does anyone have any idea what could cause this???
I'm so sorry for your loss, could they have eaten the bedding? Could your feed be spoiled or soiled? Again I am so so sorry, my heart aches for your loss!
===== Hi, I am so sorry for your loss! Are you using a teflon coated light bulb in the brooder? They outgas a vapor which kills chickens.
Carbon monoxide? Might have been either cold/heat or some kind of toxin/poison for them to go all at once like that.
In which room or area were they? If they were close to the kitchen and you got a coated pan too hot or as another poster mentioned a coated bulb. Could have someone given them something like a poison. I don't think that a chill could have done them in that fast.
I was going to guess teflon coated bulb, too. They're usually labeled shatter-proof and sold in hardware stores BUT you can get both varieties in different areas at TSC. Westinghouse, I believe, makes the teflon-coated one meant for bathrooms but it looks exactly like the brooder bulbs.
Oh no!! How sad. So sorry. I'm going to say the most likely scenario is a bad batch of feed. Either it spoiled somehow/somewhere (perhaps in storage too long at the store or got damp & nobody noticed--again, could have happened at the store or warehouse), or improperly formulated. Every once in a while, even the major brands screw up and distribute a bad batch of feed that results in illness, deformities and/or deaths. It would be worthwhile to find out if anyone else in your area experiences something like this in the next few weeks--that would indicate something from the batch of feed your feed store is currently carrying. I have no experience with the teflon idea... seems far-fetched to me, but I've been wrong before. Can you think of anything at all, however minor, you've done differently, or anything you've changed, in the past 24 hours? Maybe a water change (where did the water come from? What are you serving it in?), maybe a new bag of feed? Anything in the environment? Could also just be a bug, virus, or other illness carried in on bedding or such. What kind of hygiene practices do you use? So sorry for your loss. I hope you can find out what did it so you can prevent it happening again. Good luck!
Google "Teflon and birds". I had parrots for many years and this was covered in all of the care books. Teflon pans are a very real hazard for birds with their sensitive respiratory systms and those teflon-coated bulbs are a disaster in a brooder.
