Efowl experience

Hello. This is my first post on the forum. I alway look here for good information though.
I want to post about my recent experience with Efowl.
So I placed order for 25 chicks beginning of January.
They were set to arrive second week of Feb. everything was set and seemed good to go. I got call confirming arrival date. 3 days before expected arrival I was contacted saying it would be another two weeks! I was not too happy after scheduling time off work and with such short notice.
Well finally my chicks arrived. The lady at post office said normally they're a lot more chirpy and not as smelly. So we hurried home to open the box.
My wife opens the box and starts frantically crying. 20 of 25 were completely dead. We tried for the next 24 hours to get the remaining ones going but the rest slowly died.
I know some ppl have good experiences, ours was very bad and we learned our lesson.
If you order from there be prepared for what may arrive and i would be cautious to let your kids be around because it is pretty sad. They did refund all of our money....we are bummed that we did not buy locally we could of had 2 month old chicks by now from when we originally ordered.

I'm so sorry for your experience. This is my biggest fear. I'm sorry it happened to you. can I ask how they were shipped?? was it priority or express? How many days did the shipping take? a lot of times it out of the hatchery's hands once the birds leave and in the post offices hands. can I ask did the box have a heat pack in it. with that many they usually don't need one so probably not. how were they packed? I wonder if someone was rough with them in shipping? This story makes me so sad. I wonder if the birds were weak to start with? Again, I'm so very very sorry.

Good grief I just looked on their site and they charge 12.00$ for a bird that gets the Mareks vaccine!! For ONE?? Meyers hatchery charged .50 CENTS to vaccinate a bird....WOW, ... there prices are HIGH!

Being called three days before expected arrival is not uncommon because that i when the baby chicks for a given week usually hatch. It means not enough hatched to fill your order. This is a normal practice in the poultry business becaus3 they are live animals and some factors are beyond control of hatchery. Since they refunded all of your money it is not really fair to give them a bad review, it seems like they tried to make it right. This time of year is tough on shipped chicks, I had a order with a differnt hatchery a while back and lost 17 of 25, but they made right on it and sent replacements. When ordering shipped birds its a good idea to wait for mild weather shipping dates if you are in a colder climate. Im in East Texas and lost what i did to getting cold in transit, ive ordered mail order 4 or 5 times and the last one was the only one that has ever been trouble. I use ideal poultry, they are 2.5 hours from me. I think efowl.com drop ships, so I dont know how far yours had to go. Im not trying to be ugly harsh, just seems to me they did what they could to make it right and perhaps dont deserve the negative feedback.

dmanhefner said:

Being called three days before expected arrival is not uncommon because that i when the baby chicks for a given week usually hatch. It means not enough hatched to fill your order. This is a normal practice in the poultry business becaus3 they are live animals and some factors are beyond control of hatchery. Since they refunded all of your money it is not really fair to give them a bad review, it seems like they tried to make it right. This time of year is tough on shipped chicks, I had a order with a differnt hatchery a while back and lost 17 of 25, but they made right on it and sent replacements. When ordering shipped birds its a good idea to wait for mild weather shipping dates if you are in a colder climate. Im in East Texas and lost what i did to getting cold in transit, ive ordered mail order 4 or 5 times and the last one was the only one that has ever been trouble. I use ideal poultry, they are 2.5 hours from me. I think efowl.com drop ships, so I dont know how far yours had to go. Im not trying to be ugly harsh, just seems to me they did what they could to make it right and perhaps dont deserve the negative feedback.

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I'm just saying exactly what my experience was. I'm at fault to a little. I did not realize how far these chicks were going to be shipped from. This was our first time ordering online. I think they should have some sort of weather and distance requirements though.

oliverfarm said:

I'm just saying exactly what my experience was. I'm at fault to a little. I did not realize how far these chicks were going to be shipped from. This was our first time ordering online. I think they should have some sort of weather and distance requirements though.

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How many days did they spend in transit?

realsis said:

How many days did they spend in transit?

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They were in transit for 2 days.

oliverfarm said:

They were in transit for 2 days.

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Was the smell a rotting smell?

For them to be smelly enough to cause a stench from the outside of the package, let alone inside, means they were in an advanced state of decay. Something like that doesn't happen in 48 hours unless they'd been sitting in 100 degree heat. If it was cold outside, at least under 60 or 70, there would not have been any notable smell. I would suspect they were actually kept too warm... Maybe a well-meaning postman decided to 'keep them warm'.

( I'm in the bone business; monitoring decay is basically my trade knowledge )

oliverfarm said:

They were in transit for 2 days.

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That's it??? WOW. Did you have a cold spell or cold weather where live? Do you think they got chilled? or were miss handled? I'm so curious because I'm really worried about the shipping of my hatchlings coming up in April. I'm get so scared when I read these kind of stories. I'm just want to try to understand what happened? which hatchery does efowl use. do they ship directly from that hatchery? Thank you for helping me understand.

They were pretty cold to the touch when I got them. They were air shipped and the day I received them it was in the 20s. I think what really did it was how cold it was. I think this would not be an issue during warmer months.
I looked back at the tracking total travel time to the post office was 61 hours.