New urban chicken raisers - Edmond, OK

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EdmondNative

EdmondNative

In the Brooder
6 Years
Jan 13, 2014
28
0
22
Edmond, OK
Hello, My wife and I are new to the whole 'urban chicken' experience. However, we recently moved to an acreage and decided to give it a try as a hobby and something enjoyable for our youngest relatives when they come to visit.

We bought a coop from our local Sam's Club ($300 and claims to be good for up to 6 hens).

We just want to start with 3 hens and see how it goes.

Unfortunately it hasn't started off too well. We didn't know where to buy adult egg laying hens so we went to a place called Mary's Swap Meet. We bought 3 hens on Saturday morning (claimed to be 9 months old). On Saturday one was found dead and this morning another was dead.

Not sure how common this is with chickens dying from stress of relocation or if they were diseased when we got them. Can't imagine we did anything to kill them - provide a coop in a protected area, provided a waterer and scratch.

Hoping to get some good advice here.
 
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Hi there,
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and welcome to BYC!

Unfortunately when you purchase birds from swap meets and poultry meets, many times they are sick to begin with. People don't get rid of healthy birds and these places are a quick way for people to dispose of their ill birds. I am very sorry you had this experience. The best thing you could do is get some chicks from the feed store in the spring, or even order them on line. Some hatcheries will sell only a handful of chicks for shipment.

Maybe you could ask around at your feed store on where you might buy some quality birds. Lots of times feed stores have lines of good poultry.

But it is great to have you aboard and enjoy BYC!
 
Some chickens do stress out like that
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What kind of feed are you going to be giving them
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Your last hen try this boil up an egg and peal mash and serve
this is to help with any recovery
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Keep your chickens out of the wind and weather
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Lets see a photo of your live chicken
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Welcome to BYC! It sounds to me that they were already sick. Chickens are very resilient and a relocation shouldn't stress them enough to kill them. When you said you were feeding them scratch did you mean cracked corn? If so, that is considered a treat and chickens need chick grower until they lay and layer pellets/crumbles when they start laying eggs. I recommend reading thru the Learning Center, https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center it has some great information that will really help you out. Good luck to you! :)
 
Welcome to BYC - sorry about your bad luck. Go to the social forum and locate your state thread in 'Where are you? Where am I!' - hopefully you can buy some locally raised birds that have not been exposed to the diseases frequently found at poultry markets.
 
Hello :frow and Welcome To BYC! Sorry about your birds, hope you are able to figure out the problem. You might want to post on the Emergencies forum about their symptoms. If you still have a bird remaining from the swap meet, you probably don't want to get new ones until you figure out if she has something that could infect new birds.
 
I agree with Kelsie, the swap meet birds may have had a contagious disease. If you bring in new birds they will catch it too.
 

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