The wife and I ordered 140 or so laying birds in February and everything went fine. Then Covid-19 hit and we scrambled to barely get 500 meat birds ordered for the season and they were spread out over six delivery dates from two hatcheries. We slaughtered a hundred, two weeks ago and they were pitiful, largest bird was 4 pounds. These are Cornish crosses mind you and we let them grow for nine weeks. We also ordered turkeys and almost half of them arrived dead. We were returned our money but need turkeys for our customers. Just received a order of 100 Cornish crosses and 30 arrived dead and I think another 15 to 20 ain't gonna make it. Been raising meat birds for sale for quiet a while and have never had so many die. I usually have less than 5% mortality. Anyone else having problems with their orders.

Never saw that level of mortality, but it's been awful hot over much of the country, that can't be helping

This last heat wave stressed and killed too many of my turkeys.

I know the post office isn't moving as quickly as normal. my last batch I was calling the PO 2x a day, and they were still 1 day late.

I know there were issues getting birds this year if you didnt order early enough. We usually put our orders in in February. I order from Murray McMurray hatchery and I haven't had any issues getting good quality birds in. I just got another order of 35 in yesterday. All look really good so far.

My buddy in Georgia sent me some eggs to hatch, it took a week for em to get here and one broke. Oh man did that package stink.

We have brooded two groups with our incubator this year with so-so results but if many would be coming to us DOA or sickly we will keep working on improving on our end.

Bryce

Ours did the same thing, 9 weeks and dressed 4-4.5 pounds. Not sure what the problem was, on grass plus lots of feed also. They should have dressed almost twice that.