Hi all. My family and I have been raising chicks for the last three years, and we just love our feather babies. This year I bought four chicks (to add to the 8 we already had) and they were just so much smaller/younger than the others, and younger than we have ever started with I might add. We have kept them isolated from the older chicks and we started them on the same starter/grower feed we had for our others, just ground finer. We have a heat lamp in place to keep them warm, but it also seems to keep them awake all night. We lost one of the babies two days after purchase, and subsequently switched them to a mix of medicated food and the regular starter/grower food. The three remaining chicks seem healthy and active (and I always see them standing in their food dish, and occasionally pecking) but they just don't seem to be growing, especially compared to our other eight which are growing like weeds. I have cleaned pasty bottoms a couple of times now, but otherwise I can't see that anything is wrong with them. Any advice?
p.s., we have lost three of our sweet hens (I think a fox has found our flock and continues to return) in the last three weeks, and my heart just can't take losing these babies.
p.s., we have lost three of our sweet hens (I think a fox has found our flock and continues to return) in the last three weeks, and my heart just can't take losing these babies.