Rural King Chicks keep dying (2024)

Five weeks ago i bought a dozen chicks (morans, orphington, and spitzenhabens) and put them in my house in a plastic tote for the first night. I then moved them to our outside chicken run (inside our run is a large coop for the older chickens and then we also have a small coop for new chicks). Both coops have electricity for heat lights. Every night the chicks were fine and every morning/every other morning one chick would be dead. 11 of the 12 died. Two weeks after that i bought ten more chicks and had them in our home in a plastic tube for a week with no problem. Two days ago i put them in the small chicken coop with no issues the first day. Day two and i find two dead.
There are no other chickens in the run as we had lost our flock this past winter due to predators.
There is no visible sign of injury.
No visible sign of mites.
In the house, the chicks were feed a medicated starter feed but once i moved them outside i feed them crumbles and they were eating fine.
Water is treated with electrolytes and they were all drinking it.
Poop looks fine.
The two common denominators are: 1)They were all placed in the small coop that had been previously used with no issues. 2)They were both given crumbles that was in a metal can for the past six months, the food does not smell bad nor do i see visible signs of mold.
Now to the question - what they heck is going on? I have raised many chickens in the past and never had this issue.

I would bet they are dying from Cocci.
Or the food!
That seems way too old.

I agree old feed stored in metal can. It may have reacted with the metal in some way during storage.

Im really leaning towards the food to, so i went and bought a new bag of medicated starter today. As a precaution, I also moved them to the larger coop in case there is some residual issues in the smaller coop.

So how old were the chicks as they died? Were they just a week or two old? Your feed was too old. Old feed can be lacking in vitamins, plus there is always a risk of mold. It may not have been the cause of death. Coccidiosis as others have said might have been a problem if they were several weeks old or older. Corid (amprollium) can treat that. If they were only days or a week or so old, I would guess that they could have had stress either from the feed store or from shipping. Feed stores will sometimes keep a couple of hundred chicks in 6 foot long brooders, with a waterer on one end, and a feeder on the other. I have watched overcrowded brooders full of chicks, and wondered how the poor things ever find their water. It seems that many obviously have pasty butt when you look at them. All feed stores are not bad, but it helps to watch the chicks to see if they look alert, are eating and drinking, and if they have droppings stuck to them, be sure to check them daily for awhile.