New Babies!

[Rhetts]

Meaghan-McMurray posts on their website about putting sugar in the water. They also have a section on if the birds had a really hard trip what to give them. Make sure they have the quick chick or some electrolytes in the water. Be careful if you are tube feeding because you can very easily get it in their air tube. Make sure you are going on the side of the tongue in back not straight down the middle. Sorry for your losses!! Hope they perk up soon!

 

[dkp25]

Sorry to hear about losses,now I'm a little but concerned with my shipment from cackle hatchery as I sit here impatiently awaiting the phone call from the post office. This is my first time ordering chicks, I have always got them local so I'm not to sure what to expect. I have 41 of them that were supposed to be shipped out Monday at 5am and I still have not heard anything yet, so hopefully the phone will ring sometime soon because I'm like a little kid waiting for that one big Christmas present!!!!!

 

[Meaghan]

Rhetts: We had already put sugar water in the waterer.

dkp25: I hope you have better luck! Unfortunately ours shipped out at 9pm on Saturday night, and didn't get here until 7am this morning, we picked them up around 10am (the PO doesn't open until 9:30, we just got a courtesy call earlier)

I spoke too soon. While we were out getting Sav-A-Chick to try and save the ones we thought looked healthy, more went downhill. 3 have died so far, and I sort of expect another 5-7 to die later tonight. All but one Columbian and two Blue/Red looks bad or is already dead.

We'll have to update the hatchery in the morning of the loss. It's already at 1/3 of the ones we ordered, I fully expect it to tally out to be 1/2 of the order.

We have been syringe feeding them drops of water mixed with the Sav-A-Chick and they are actively drinking, but they look so poorly I just don't expect them to live. Sigh.

 

[Texas Buffs]

Wow, that a rough start for those babies! I'm sorry for your loses! I'm starting to think this whole chicks by mail thing is a bad idea. My main flock was started with feed store bought chicks and they did great. All of the chicks I or my hens have hatched have done well as long as they make it past hatching. I ordered 25 Barred Rocks from Meyer and they all arrived in good shape but now four weeks in and they're dying off from something and around 15 have the shakes/tremors.

 

[Meaghan]

I'm sorry to hear about your chicks! I hope some of them pull through. I know what you're going through.

A hatchery nearby has a lot of varieties of chicks, though they aren't vaccinated for Marek's. We got all of the hatchery chicks vaccinated, and didn't realize that vaccinated/unvaccinated chicks couldn't be mixed. Is that true?

 

[Meaghan]

Just checked again, the count is up to 18 losses, with another 5 or so looking sickly. Even with giving them the Sav-A-Chick they're still dying. Thank goodness McMurray has a replacement/refund guarantee for 48 hours. I hope the last Columbian and the last two Blue/Red that still look healthy make it, but at this point I'm not sure. We've lost 5 Columbians, 4 Blue/Reds, 3 Silvers, 1 Gold, 4 Buffs, and the extra rare chick.

 

[Birdmanfrom]

Sorry to hear....this is why so many of us grower don't ship!

 

[3riverschick]

Meaghan,
I see you have sand in the brooder. Could the chicks just be eating the sand instead of their feed? Also, what is the temp on top of the sand? Could the sand have gotten hot and is roasting them from the bottom up? Is that a 250 red heat bulb you have in there? It may be too hot combined with the sand? Think of yourself at the beach with the sun shining down ad how hot the sand got.
There is a difference between the red heat bulbs and incandescant bulbs. The heat bulb are designed to heat "objects" within their realm of influence. The incandescant bulbs just throw off heat as a by-product of being turned on. Maybe try an 80 watt incandescant instead? If you are using a 250 with sand, it's a good idea to have a hygrometer at sand level. That's a thermometer which also has a humidity gauge in it. That way you can see if the heat on the sand is causing too low of humidity where the chicks live. should be able to get a digital one at Wal-Mart for not much money.
I wonder that you have 2 groups on opposite corners of the brooder?
Even sav-a-chick needs to be digested. Poultry Nutri-Drench does not. When chicks get stressed for any reason, it compromises ther ability to uptake nutrients and helps. The Bovidr Labs Nutri products don't need digesting. They mainline straight to the bloodstream . The idea here is to interdict the stress timeline with helps the chick can utilize in spite of it's stressed state... before the body systems reach a tipping point between severity of stress and lack of helps which causes a cascade of body systems failures leading to death. Fed orally. 50% uptake in 30 minutes. 99% utilization. Here more on the subject: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/746509/how-to-deal-with-travel-stress-in-baby-chicks
I have used Bovidr's Pet Nutri-Drops; Poultry Nutri-Dench and Goat Nutri-Drench on my chicks with good success. Tho the Bovidr formulas are species specific, their health techs told me that they also meet the scientific standards for a universal formula. So if your tack store or Tractor Supply is out of one formula, you can use another one in a pinch. Just make sure you use the poultry dosage and usage instructions for ever formula you use. They are: give one drop only by mouth every 8 to 10 hours as need. For maintaince, put 2ml per gallon in their water. For stress put 4 ml per gallon in their water. if the chicks don't like the 4ml concentration taste, I was told it is ok to back down to the 2ml concentration. I put it in my chicks' water for the 1st month of life to get them off to a strong start. Have used their formulas on my dogs and poultry for over 10 years. I used Goat, Beef and Pet formulas on my collies ( using the Pet formula usage and dosage instructions) with good success. While you are at the store, buy a 3ml syringe. Take off the needle and safely dispose of it. Use it to slip one drop in the side of their mouth. Buy a second on to measure the dose for their water bottles. The formulas are very concentrated. Buy the smallest bottle of whichever formula you choose and that will be enough for your needs. At my TSC in western PA, the Poultry s 6.99, the Pet is 7.99 and the Goat is 9.99 .
Best Success,
Karen

 

[losttexan]

Did you open the box at the Post Office?? I would contact McMurray and ask for a refund. You need to have the Postmaster sign off, I believe, that they were unhealthy when you got them (or dead). I understand weather, but the US postal service has gotten really lacksidaisical about live animal shipments...

The USPS has become lackadaisical about everything they do.

 

[Meaghan]

3riverschick: It isn't sand, it's aspen shavings covered by a cloth so that they don't eat the shavings. The older chicks (older than the ones we got today by 2 days) are scratching at the corners, you can see the shavings underneath. They are 250 watt bulbs, we installed a second one, but the other side of the brooder is cool, about 60 degrees. The entire brooder is 4ftx4ft, so they have plenty of space to get away from the heat if they want. Even in direct line of both bulbs is still comfortable to leave my hands underneath for hours as I did today while trying to syringe some Sav-A-Chick into them. We didn't originally want to use that even, as we were originally planning on raising them organically, so I didn't research non-organic options. Organically, all you can do is sugar water and chick starter. So I didn't know of the Poultry-Nutri-Drench stuff, and it's too late to go get any tonight (it's 10:30pm here). I didn't expect the mail to take 3 days to get them here, so I didn't expect so many of them to struggle and die.

The healthy older chicks from the feed store run in and out of the heat lamp space as they please, and are having zero issues. I don't have a thermometer, but using the way the chicks are spaced they were too cold rather than too hot, as you can see in the picture of the light/dark mix chicks they are concentrated under the direct line of the heat lamp, rather than running away from it as chicks do when they are too hot. The older chicks ran away to the far corner not because they are too hot, but because they are not as friendly. They run from any human activity, a door opening, any shadows, etc.

Birdmanfrom: I can understand that. The only reason we ordered from a hatchery rather than local was because we wanted a few of the more hard to find Wyandotte colors, but didn't want to pay to buy 25 of them. We got 7 Columbians and 6 Blue Laced Reds, and decided that we would rather just get them all at once. If we had known, we would have just ordered mixed Columbians and Blue-Laced Reds and gotten the other ones local.

Unfortunately, we've lost a total of 25/45 now. All the chicks that died were extremely emaciated. I have cut up many dead chicks before to feed raptors and such at wildlife centers, and all of them had full healthy yolk sacs. The spot where these chicks' yolk sacs should have been was flat and bony. I'm not sure if we'll lose more overnight or not.