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I'm new to Prepared Society but I thought I would ask the group about a solution for what we think is a mineral deficiency. As you all know to be prepared you have to have food, water and shelter. Animal husbandry is not something you pick up over night. We are raising chickens, guineas and turkeys amongst other livestock (beef, goats, horses, etc.). We lived in KS until a year ago. The layers are for egg production. The fryers and turkeys are for cooking. The guineas supplement the guard dogs and clean up the ticks, chigger, flies when left to free range. The beef put meat in the freezer. We buy a hog annually from the neighbor. The goats forage the broadleaf weeds including poison ivy and oak. The horse provide a means of transportation if things get really bad. We tried raising poultry on non medicated starter feed in KS and the losses were significant. Once we switched to medicated starter feed our survival rate increased dramatically. We stopped feeding scratch grain because the poultry would eat the corn but leave the milo. Cracked corn is cheaper and that is what we use to feed out the steers during their last 90 days. Now in NC, we are starting over and the poultry eats everything we put in front of them. Chickens include fryers and layers. At about 4 months old the layers are doing well but many of the fryers have not gained weight like they should and are now having troubles being gimpy all the time. The turkeys are fine but we are losing the guineas at a fairly consistent rate (at least 1 per week). One day they are fine and the next they can not stand up then perish before sunset. We do have them in a chicken tractor that we try to move every couple weeks. The average daily temperature has been over 100 degrees with high humidity for weeks now. We have a fan running 7x24 in the coop. Free choice scratch grain and water supplemented by grass and weeds pulled from the garden every other day when we collect our vegetables. They attacked a watermelon the other day like they hadn't eaten in weeks. I know that vinegar will help stop cannibalization if an over crowding situation exists. That hasn't been our problem and we haven't tried vinegar as of yet. Anyone have any suggestions?