Notes from the wilderness!!!

[Me78569]

Came home yesterday and found a chicken laying dead in the middle of the pen.  No signs of struggle, no blood, no feathers.  Pretty odd, but it's a chicken so who knows.

[Hawkez]

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.

[Me78569]

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.

[Hawkez]

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.