Wisconsin "Cheeseheads"

[RooBeeC]

RBC, so sorry to hear you are having such a hard time with your first experience. Another factor you may want to consider is the chick feed. I can't remember if you were the one who said someone told you medicated feed was for introducing new chicks to established ones but that incorrect. Medicated feed contains small amounts of Amprollium (sp?), a low dose antibiotic that helps the chicks build a resistance to cocci. It is not a guarantee they will never get the disease, but it is a potential preventative. I always use medicated feed but that is my personal preference.

Another thing I do is grind my chick feed smaller in a coffee grinder. I have noticed over the past few years that the chick feed granules keep getting larger, which makes the chicks waste much more feed looking for pieces small enough for them to be able to swallow. They could be getting weak & dying from starvation.

I think Jim is correct that your mailed chicks were much more stressed from the cold & possible rough handling, or just being in a shipping box for too long, but then add too large of a crumble and that might be the reason they are still dying for you. In any case, I commend you for not giving up. Raising your own chickens from chicks is a very pleasant experience when everything goes right. You just happened to have some bad luck, but soon you will be a successful, experienced chick raiser.

If you are not fussy on breed & do not mind if the birds do not live that long, TSC has "assorted pullets" which are egg production birds. They will lay eggs like crazy but they burn out and die at a very young age (2-3 years old). They are usually healthy chicks. If you get any of their straight run birds, be prepared for about 80% roosters, give or take.

Good luck & welcome to the Cheesehead thread!

Thanks for the tips! I actually switched to medicated feed. And good idea with the coffee grinder, I'll try that. The chicks at this point seem to be doing great! Hopefully they stay healthy.

 

[jvls1942]

good snowy, rainy, sunny cloudy afternoon,

a few of us were going to go bowling. got to the lanes and could not bowl.. the afternoon is reserved for school kids.
So how about Saturday ? nope,, 7 birthday partys scheduled. Sunday is open.

I do not agree with having to regrind the chicken crumbles.
I have raised thousands of chickens. never had any starve because of too large of crumbles.
You would be amazed at what I have found inside of a chicken's gut. A whole quarter, and have you ever seen a chicken eat a mouse ? one bite and swallow it whole.

I know a baby chick cannot do this, but exponentially they can swallow quite large objects .

I always use medicated feed for starter chick feed, too.
So CC and I do not disagree on everything. right ?

..........jiminwisc.........

.

 

[bigzio]

Snowy Egg Settin Fish Fry Friday to all.....I have the 24 eggs set in the Brinsea Advance 20 once again. I'm planning on at least a 50% hatch rate, most folks should expect more, but....mostly due to the roo's havin their favorite women here, plenty of clears will show their clear face, is the main problem....all one has to do is look at my flock, and it's easy to tell who gets all the lovin around here....I'll never have a 100% rate of hatch like Celtic Chick does....

but it sure is fun getting the bator in motion again!

Tonight it's pan fried haddock with Cajun oven fries.... have a great one!

bigz

 

[Celtic Chick]

Snowy Egg Settin Fish Fry Friday to all.....I have the 24 eggs set in the Brinsea Advance 20 once again. I'm planning on at least a 50% hatch rate, most folks should expect more, but....mostly due to the roo's havin their favorite women here, plenty of clears will show their clear face, is the main problem....all one has to do is look at my flock, and it's easy to tell who gets all the lovin around here....I'll never have a 100% rate of hatch like Celtic Chick does....

but it sure is fun getting the bator in motion again!

Tonight it's pan fried haddock with Cajun oven fries.... have a great one!

bigz

Hey now! My bator only holds 7 and you know it, mister. Where is the finger shaking smiley when you need it?

Good luck on your hatch.

 

[BlackBrookPoultry]

Terrible day today! Chick days at work. There were 6 cars in the lot when I opened the store this morning. All wanting chicks. At 7am. They had to wait till 8am for me to get them from the post office. Only a fraction came. The other few hundred are missing! Last scanned in TX on Wednesday. One chick that actually came had a deformed leg and I had to put it down.
I had a listing for my SPW bantams on Craigslist. Some @$$hat emailed me telling me that my chickens need straw and that they look very unhappy. I swear to God, if that person would have been face-to-face with me I would have layed them out. In the picture they had just been shipped to me and they were standing on a nest box. I explained this and they told me how terrible I was for having chickens shipped and that Karma would get me. Maybe it was an April fools joke. Is like to believe that people aren't that judgemental and RUDE. Here's the picture they commented on.

 

[Celtic Chick]

They look perfectly fine & healthy to me BBP. Good color, good feathers, bright eyes. Deep breath, chicky. Karma will get them.

 

[Celtic Chick]

Hey Jim, I was thinking. Uh oh. You brood hundreds of chicks at a time and lose some here & there. Well, I only brood 6 or 7 at a time and lose none. So can you say for sure none of your loses are from chicks not getting enough feed?

 

[jvls1942]

Hey Jim, I was thinking. Uh oh. You brood hundreds of chicks at a time and lose some here & there. Well, I only brood 6 or 7 at a time and lose none. So can you say for sure none of your loses are from chicks not getting enough feed?

with all that can go wrong with chickens, can you positively say that they are starving ? and if they are starving, why do the hundreds of others not starve ?

with the volume of feed I put out, I am sure there are enough tiny pieces to please them all..
and after they are a couple of days old, they even eat the largest chunks.

sorry, I am not going to send 30 pounds of feed through a tiny coffee grinder each day ..

If they die, they die.

I still love you.

.

.......jiminwisc.......

..

 

[jvls1942]

Terrible day today! Chick days at work. There were 6 cars in the lot when I opened the store this morning. All wanting chicks. At 7am. They had to wait till 8am for me to get them from the post office. Only a fraction came. The other few hundred are missing! Last scanned in TX on Wednesday. One chick that actually came had a deformed leg and I had to put it down.
I had a listing for my SPW bantams on Craigslist. Some @$$hat emailed me telling me that my chickens need straw and that they look very unhappy. I swear to God, if that person would have been face-to-face with me I would have layed them out. In the picture they had just been shipped to me and they were standing on a nest box. I explained this and they told me how terrible I was for having chickens shipped and that Karma would get me. Maybe it was an April fools joke. Is like to believe that people aren't that judgemental and RUDE. Here's the picture they commented on.

I don't think it was an April fool's joke. there are some really misled people out there.
they don't know any better.
and they don't know anything about photography .
you get a much crisper picture without straw and other things cluttering up the background.
just be thankful that you are not ignorant a$$e$ like them

 

[Celtic Chick]

Awww, I love ya too, Jim.

No, I cannot say positively if a chick died from starvation. I merely suggested that that might be one possibility, coupled with the stress of shipping, lack of warmth, dehydration, etc. Sometimes chicks just die. Adults do too. But when you have them go in quantity, then there is usually something wrong somewhere. If they were already stressed from shipping, then making their lives easier after the fact might help them have a better chance at surviving. Grinding their feed & adding vitamins/electros would be my first choice for caring for shipped chicks, along with adequate warmth. But that is just my personal preference.

Actually, I got the idea of grinding the chick feed from a poultry supply catalogs. Premier maybe? They sell industrial feed grinders for chick feed. I think it might grind 50lbs ay a time, but I'm not positive about that. Come to think of it, didn't we have this very same discussion a few years ago? Lol!