Well, so far we are less than thrilled with our Cornish Rock chicks. This morning is the first day that I have gone in to find them all still alive. We had been finding one or two every morning that didn't make it through the night. I don't know whether it's due to having so many chicks in one space or if it is simply due to their genetic predisposition to not be nearly as hearty as a heritage breed. We've raised a few batches of chicks before these guys(at least 3, maybe 4?) and never had this bad of luck with chicks....
I believe we have 44 chicks now out of the 50 we ordered.
As per the instructions where we purchased them from, we started taking their food away at night and giving it back in the morning when they were 5 days old. Since doing that, we haven't had any more deaths(yet) so I don't know whether the other chicks were having heart attacks from eating too much or what.
That said, I think we will be leaning even moreso towards raising heritage chickens for meat in the future. Our Delaware chicks we are getting for egg production are supposed to be shipped on Monday, so we will see how they fare once we get them...hopefully better than the Cornish Rocks! And hopefully the Delaware's genetics are such that they lean towards the larger size of the breed and not the smaller side...
Just my two cents for today. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment