dcomputerman
Hatching
- Sep 5, 2016
- 1
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- 6
I know a little late for your question, but for future people looking for feedback on Hoover's Hatchery. Decided to order from them--good pricing, reasonable distance from us, and had the chicks we wanted and the quantity we wanted on some turkeys. Ordered 50 male Red Rangers (their heritage meat bird), 5 AMERICANA Female, 5 BUFF ORPINGTON Female, 10 broad breasted bronze turkeys in March. Communication was really good, talked to them on the phone a couple times, then emails after.. On arrival, 2 dead birds, 3 more died within 2 days. Turned out the Buffs took the main hit, just one of the 5 survived, the other that died was a Ranger. The 5 Americana are doing well--3 have fluffy checks as expected, 2 look like something else They all have green legs, should be laying any time, I expect some kind of colored eggs, just the non-fluffy is not what I had expected--may be why they're named Americana instead of Ameraucana. The single Buff looks good, mild tempered, doing well. We got the Red Rangers after raising Cornish X last year and finding out how disgusting those birds are and were hopeful for a big, nice looking bird out of these. However... appears we wound up with 48 pullets, 1 rooster. Rooster is just fair sized body, hens vary a bit--some larger than the rooster, most smaller. They did forage better than the Cornish X during the day, but for the amount of feed we put into them at night for a much longer time than the Cornish X make them not worth doing, IMO. They're good looking birds, but just weighed one that survived the first butcher day, and live weight was <4 #. The butchered ones cleaned to about 3# at 5 months making it pretty expensive meat. Maybe if we got the roosters as we ordered we'd be doing better? No idea. Pretty much has cured us from going with these in future tho. Next year, back to Cornish X with food restricted enough they stay fully feathered and mobile--butchering good looking, healthy birds at 10 weeks instead of immobile, disgusting birds at 6 weeks.
Don't buy the turkeys--very bad luck all around on those. Hoover was good to deal with, paid us for the dead turkeys.
Don't buy the turkeys--very bad luck all around on those. Hoover was good to deal with, paid us for the dead turkeys.