Estes Hatchery Made Good! UPDATE***CHICKS ARE HERE***

8 weeks ago now I recieved an order of chicks from Estes Hatchery. 16 Salmon Faverolles, 15 EE's, and 7 Cinnamon Queens. 38 chicks. Right off the bat I lost 4 Salmon chicks. Everyone else has been fine. I then would lose one here and one there over the weeks. This past week I lost 6 more, 7 week old Salmon chicks who literally just dropped dead from what looked like starvation (I thought they were being bullied and kept from food).
I now have 3 Salmons left from 16 chicks. I have not lost a single EE or CQ. I decided to call the hatchery and let them know. I sent one of the dead birds off the state vet for a detailed necropsy and had blood work done on one of the half dead ones. EVERYTHING is normal on these birds the vet has no idea why they died and simply put it as Failure To Thrive.
So I call and I get a woman on the phone who is just talking in circles "I don't know" "That's really weird" "I have never heard of that before". I tell her that I think it was just a weak batch and a poor hatch and she tells me that there is no such thing as a poor hatch or weak chicks She offers no refund of any kind, no discount on the next order, doesn't even look up my order! I talked to her for 15 minutes probably and she asked me tons of questions "Did you give them warm water?" "Did you keep them warm?" "Did you give them an egg yolk?" "Did you put sugar in the water?" etc. etc. and on and on.
Now I am in tears. I waited 3 month for SF chicks after wanting them for over a year prior. And I have three. It's better than none, but it's still not what I paid for. Losing 13 chicks cannot be the norm. These chicks were loved pets with names and things. I only get this attached to my layer chickens who are supposed to be around for awhile! What a bummer!


****Please see my updated post, page 7****

Wow, that is interesting!

Since I guess they've not had multiple complaints from other customers, it must have been some small human error that caused their deaths. Of course day old chicks sometimes die, and it seems it happens more with chicks shipped to your home.

Are you sure you don't have cocci in the flock and it's killing the weakest ones? Strange that the vet didn't find anything though. I would think they check for that as well, but perhaps not. Maybe they only test for contagious diseases, and visual abnormalities?

I'm sorry for your lost. I hope the rest continue to thrive!

I am sorry, that is terrible!!! I cannot imagine how upset you must be! You would think tho that they would have wanted to help out in some way, maybe send you more chicks! I but something!!!!!!!
Hope your other little ones make it ok!

Call back and ask for a supervisor, keep bugging them. They owe you some more chicks. If noting else just good customer realations!

*hugs*

thats terrible!

I think it is a breed thing not a hatchery thing. SF seems to be a bit weaker than other breeds. Do a search on here and you will see many that have lost SF chicks while the other breed did fine. Sorry about you losses.

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And it could be that they are weaker/smaller than the other breeds and are being pushed away from the food and starving. You said yourself that's what it looked like. Could that be? Please don't take that as an accusation, just trying to help you figure out what's happening. Maybe you should separate the remaining ones to be sure they're getting their fill.

I got 5 S.F.s from Ideal Hatchery and they are doing fine at 3 mts. old. I have observed that they don't seem as hearty as my others. They seem to develop slower and take longer to "catch on" to new things. So sorry about your losses and i hope the others do well. Good Luck

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And it could be that they are weaker/smaller than the other breeds and are being pushed away from the food and starving. You said yourself that's what it looked like. Could that be? Please don't take that as an accusation, just trying to help you figure out what's happening. Maybe you should separate the remaining ones to be sure they're getting their fill.

No, no, it's fine. I was in the wrong partially, sure. I had no idea that they wouldn't make sure to get their fill.
To me it just seemed like a huge amount of chicks to lose. Only these last 4-5 that died were really thin. The other 8-10 were fine weight wise.
No Cocci here either.
It's a mystery. I'm just upset that they couldn't have been a little more, friendly, or compassionate, or something.. The whole time I talked to her she was just like "yeah" "uh huh" "did you do this?" "that?" etc. You know how you can be talking to someone but they aren't really paying attention. That's what it was like. Like she was doing something else on the other end and not really listening to everything I was saying.
Maybe I will e-mail them.

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That stinks. I wish I had known they weren't as hardy before I got them. Everything I read said they were a really hardy breed.
I will try again because I really love the breed but I will probably just hatch some eggs or something. Anyone here with SF eggs?