I got a great video for you to watch about raising chickens.  Now take a look at these two good looking guys while they bring you up to date on the latest way to raise these chicks.  Michael & I watched this and think it has a helluva lot of merit.  If its country....its got my vote.  Love ya.

 

I had a group of birds that I bought from the same hatchery out of Idaho.  Out of the 20 that I bought, 6 died in the first 5 weeks.  It was really strange.  When I noticed that the last one was on her way out I decided to put open it up to look at her organs.  The liver was extremely discolored and the heart was small and almost deflated.  I don't know what would cause any of this, and I never had any other issues like this from other birds from this hatchery.  I assume I got a few that had bad genetics.  It can be frustrating when your birds seem to die for no reason and nothing you can do about it.

Yea it was strange, this one was a 2 years old, had been laying up to 2 days ago and looked / acted healthly.  

 

Thankfully we don't actually need 5 chickens, 3 is plenty for our needs.

My family spent our day yesterday getting birds ready for Thanksgiving.  My boys have been raising these turkeys since August and they finished out really well.