It was shocking. It was the first time we'd ordered pre-hatched chicks shipped to us. They were from a fairly local source in-state so I felt comfortable with the transit and standards for shipping livestock are actually really good in this country (thank the Grange for that). But it was obviously something that happened in handling- either this batch was completely overlooked for vaccination (unlikely) or it was their pre-shipping environment.

Needless to say I won't be doing pre-hatched again unless I'm physically inspecting them and picking them up myself next time. Our incubation rates are excellent (80%+) anyway so it really was a "let's try this because it's less of a hassle."

But yeah, I felt very bad for the little guys and gals. It was very sad literally seeing a pile of little yellow bodies every morning and not be able to do a damn thing about it.

The four survivors are full-grown at this point and doing very well, though! (They're Leghorn-Rhode crosses, for the record).