Some Days just Stink!

A couple of weeks ago we purchased 25 Barred Rock day old chicks as replacement birds for some of our older laying hens.  We put them into a little brooder cage in our garage and we'll keep them here until they get some feathers or it gets a little warmer and then we'll put them out on the pasture in a chicken tractor. 

Barred Rock pullet chicks

At the same time we got 100 Cornish Cross chicks and put 50 in each of our two other brooders.  They come in the mail and they are shipped at 1 day old.  We'll normally get a call from the Post Office at around 6:30 in the morning telling us that our birds have arrived.  When you get them in, the Poultry Company normally gives you a few extra in the event that any die during shipping. 

When you open the package, you're supposed to get them out, dip each one's head into a sugar/water solution to give them electrolytes.  Then you put them into the brooder with newspaper spread out and sprinkle some Chick Starter 18% Protein Ration on it.  The chicks instinctively start scratching and eating and you know things are going to be okay.  After a day or so, you remove the newspaper, put in feeders instead and waterers, of course.

One of the brooders with 50 Cornish Cross chicks

You want to be sure to keep them warm, so it is important to hang heat lamps over them.  Sort of a weird thing to think about that at one day old, they have heat lamps over them and then if you go to Popeye's or some other fried chicken joint, the fried chicken has heat lamps over it.  At the very beginning of their lives at at the end of their life, heat lamps cover them.

Heat lamp over brooder #1



Heat Lamp over brooder #2

These birds, especially the Cornish Cross meat chicken, eat a lot.  If they eat a lot, you know that they will be pooping a lot.  With 125 birds in the garage, it gets, how shall I say?  Aromatic.  It gets very, very aromatic in the garage.  Every single day you must change out the hay or wood shavings in the bottom of the brooder or the smell will be unbearable.

The title of the post was "Some Days just Stink!"  Until we move them out of the garage and onto the pasture, the days that they're still in the garage, literally stink.  Another reason some days stink is when you have problems with your birds.  Normally, we'll lose a couple of birds here and there.  They'll pile up on one another and one will suffocate or one will just die for an undetermined reason.

Warning: if you're eating breakfast: YOU MAY WANT TO FINISH BREAKFAST BEFORE VIEWING THE NEXT PICTURES.

It has been incredibly frustrating each day for the last week to wake up in the morning and go out to the brooders to feed and water and find this:
 

Not pretty, huh?

I immediately pull the dead birds out of the brooder for a proper burial in the garden.


Dead chick

The trouble is, the dead birds keep piling up.  Each day we're averaging 3 dead.  We've thought and gone over our production system and we haven't changed a thing from prior batches.     

The body count rises...

Even though I've never had to do this, you can notice in the photo below that I've used some paneling to "round off" the corners as most of the times, the dead birds can be found in the corners squashed and dead from the other birds being on top of them. 


Rounding off the corners

Unfortunately this didn't really slow down the death rate.  Bad feed? Sick birds?  We just don't know.  And then today, they just stopped dying.  All we can figure is this: perhaps the birds were just sickly.  Birds that normally lived through being squashed a bit when they pile up now couldn't make it as they were sickly and in a weakened state.

We lost quite a few birds.  We keep detailed records and right now, I don't have the courage to tally the death toll.  It is easy to get discouraged at times like this.  Death is ugly.  Birds are smelly.  Dead birds don't yield meat for the freezer or money for your pocketbook.  But we keep moving forward.  We do the best we can and leave it in God's hands.

This morning I told Tricia that we need to look on the bright side.  In every occurrence, if you look hard enough, you can find something to be thankful for.

#1  We're thankful that they stopped dying.  Today we lost zero birds,
#2  If we had to lose birds, now is the time to lose them.  At date of slaughter, each bird will have consumed a little over $5 worth of feed.  These baby chicks might have had a nickel's worth of feed go through them so far.  I'd rather them die sooner than later.
#3  The dead baby chicks are buried in the garden and their decaying bodies provide nutrients/fertilizer that will produce beans, corn, potatoes, etc.  Their death is not a total loss.

Just trying to look on the bright side.  And the sun will rise again tomorrow...