Well, it happened… we had a pile-up in the layer house and lost 37 young chickens. I’ve heard about how chickens will pile up if they’re too cold or get frightened and that the ones on the bottom will smother. I’ve heard about keeping building corners from being too tight for young chicks, curving the corners with wood or cardboard, which I’ve done in the brooder and which I also did in the layer house when they were babies, since we brooded them in the same house. They had always clustered together in clumps and after being concerned about it early on, it seemed like they found a good safe way to lay, since we’d never lost one before. Before now, I felt like I was doing a really good job on the raising of chickens… might not keep track of every detail, might not be so great at marketing and sales, but I raised birds up into healthy and seemingly happy birds.
It’s hard not to take this on as failure, even though Sue was very gentle in her telling when she found them last night, too many in one area and too quiet. She reminded me that we knew things like this can happen and now it had and it was no one’s fault. Really, I know this and while I am indeed very sad, I’m not incapacitated with guilt, nor with grief. (I am a bit incapacitated with a virus, but that’s another story.) Today I woke up pre-dawn and knew that I had to immediately get up and get those dead birds out of the layer house and let the other ones out before the living could defile the dead… a nasty notion and one which can lead to truly problematic behaviors for a flock of chickens to develop. I had everything ready, with gloves and wheelbarrow for the dead and feed in buckets for the living. Open the doors, wade through the streams of chickens and pour feed into troughs, then check the water trough and back to the house. I counted as I lifted each body and was amazed that 37 pullets could even fit into the corner they had crammed themselves into…and that doesn’t count the living ones on top of that pile. So sad, this loss of life… somehow it must be avoidable… somehow, not just to save the money we lost in our investment of time and food, but to prevent suffering.
Why did it happen? As I noted previously, we brooded these gals in the same house they will live in their entire lives. We brought the chicks (hatched the same day we picked them up) and put them into their house, under the two hovers I’d built to ensure adequate space under a range of heated areas. Their home was a circle of cardboard that expanded as they grew until only the corners were lined and the heat lights were turned off and then the door opened into a bigger world in a small yard, then into an even bigger world in their large fenced-in yard. Life was good and they were a happy clambering clatter of chicks… until the time came to move their house to a new location. This is necessary if you want to pasture chickens in a way that is sustainable and humane~ that maximizes the pasture for the birds (grass and bugs) and minimizes the impact on the soil and plants. Our pullet chicks had lived their whole 3 weeks worth of life in one place and we knew it could be traumatic to move them.
So, we put the house up on wheels and pulled it with the truck into a new spot about 50 feet away. We moved the feed and water troughs near the new location before moving it, since food and water are the most important items in their lives and are what they fix their attention on most of the time. By the time the first move was over, it was afternoon… the chicks were hanging out, eating and drinking, scratching and pecking and we thought fine. Then a tornado and thunderstorm warning came along at the same time as evening and when we went to close up these gals, they were huddled together in their old house spot! We tried ‘herding’ them, luring them with food, and scaring them… each time they would run back to their original spot…. An hour later Sue and I are wearing hard hats (in case it hails) and miner’s lights (to see in the dark), running back and forth with crates we fill with pullets from the old spot and empty into the new house… all 300 of them. The next day I kept them in their house with food and water and after that they were fine. Just perfect, no piling up, no panic, just getting out in the morning and being closed in at night after they walk themselves into their nice house.
Well, this time, we were sure to have the move done in the morning, giving them plenty of time to adjust. No difference. This time we decided to risk predation and give them a couple days to make the move (with a 4000-6000 volt electric fence on and the dogs out all night, not too much to worry about)~ nope, still sleeping on the previous location. So on day three, I put their food troughs in their house in late afternoon and lured them with food… they went happily in and ate and settled on the crates we were using as roosts until we put in the wooden ones. I though all was well, until Sue went and checked and was going to move the ones that hadn’t yet gone in (yep, they were lying in their old spot)…. And found the pile-up.
So we know why it happened but not why it happened this time and not the last time. And we don’t know how to move the layer house without making a crisis for the birds. We have had what many farmers would consider minor or moderate loss, significant sadness, and some learning… but not the key piece. This we haven’t read anywhere and don’t yet know. How do we move our birds in a way that works for us all? Stay tuned, friends, because we will figure it out and then we can help others avoid this sad event.
Here’s the PS to this entry… I just checked the pullets—after dark—and found that those who were inside last night are insight tonight, and the ones clustered in their old location last night are there again tonight. All seems calm and I’ll check in the morning for their condition… and pray there’s no pile-up or predation or any other loss of these or any of our other animals.
I'm so sad to hear about this. You both are doing such good, important work - I had no idea raising chickens was such a delicate operation. I know you're doing all you can to do this right and to give these birds a decent life. I'm sorry to learn that it can be so painful.
Take care, keep learning, and be well.
Posted by: Julie Gomoll | November 29, 2008 at 10:42 PM