Ideal Poultry!

[IdealisticRoo]

Wow!

The Ideal Poultry website shows sold out until "June 2011" for most standard breeds and some even say "sold out until 2012"!

I ordered 2 batches in January (25 pullets each) and 2 in February (21 chicks and then 9 chicks and 4 geese). All told, I have ordered 7 times in 6 months.

I am VERY happy with the value for money I received. Sure, there were a few losses and a couple minor mistakes, but they do a bang-up job of selling and shipping wonderful birds!

I suspect that a lot of the "Serious Breeders" supplement with Ideal Stock for diversity, simply because a lot of the rarer breeds are not easy to obtain!

Ideal has the most reasonable prices on even the rarest birds!

No, I don't work for them.

Yes, I know this is not the place for reviews. I am just curious about how many BYC-ers are also Ideal Poultry supporters.

 

[IdealisticRoo]

Meow!

Taken 3/2/2011 with my camera phone!

 

[idealpoultry]

Howdy Y'all

It has been a very busy spring for us and like every other hatchery we are showing to be sold out until after Easter. However, please place your name on the waiting list. Hatching poultry is purely an educated guessing game based on past history of hatching. Generally fertility will start out low around 40%, peak around now at 60 -70, and once the temperature starts getting up into the high 90's it drops back off.

Each week once the hatch is complete the hatch persentage is refigured and either raised or lowered for each breed based on the hatch. An example would be yesterday the Faverolle hatched about 100 extra and we were able to increase the projected hatch for the next weeks that are set (3 weeks). Therefore, I was able to sell about 600 Faverolle off the waiting list this morning. Especially those that want just a few of each breed, I really recommend this route. Often we can not book 25 pullets for you but getting 2 or 3 will work.

Very few people, even those in our community understand what we do at Ideal Poultry. I'm going to try to give you a brief synopsis of what we do each week.

We are one of the largest employers in our community. Our office staff consist of 18 customer service reps, here to take your calls to place orders or answer your questions. Ross is the manager over the retail department of 9 and Janet and I manage the wholesale staff. Monroe (dad) is still here and works our larger wholesale accounts. I also manage the shipping department and website. Gary is in charge of the hatching and breeding program. Gary's son Stephen just returned to the business and is learning different aspects at this time.


7 days a week a staff of about 20 gathers, sorts, washes and cases eggs to be taken to the hatchery. They are also responsible for feeding, watering, debeaking and vaccinating the flock of about 60,000 birds. They also maintain about 30 poultry houses and 100 acres of surrounding area.

Once the eggs are brought to the hatchery each morning and afternoon they are placed in a cooler where they are held until the set time. Chicken eggs as you all know hatch in 21 days, however that is an estimate, just like babies are born in 9 months. Certain breeds take only 20 + a couple of hours and some take 21 + 10 hours or even a wider variation. Each breed is given a number, color code and shape based on hatching time and if it is a feather sexable or vent sexable breed. The eggs are then placed in the incubators or "set" based on the estimated hatching time.

As an example:

Blue Cochins FS - Purple - Square - 40
Blue Cochins VS - Purple - Triangle - 40

Triangles are set to hatch at 6am on Tuesday mornings so the Vent Sexors can get started when they arrive at 8am and the Squares are set to hatch at 10 am for the feather sexors. However sometimes (like yesterday) a machine will have a malfunction and the chicks that should have hatched at 10am did not hatch till about 2pm. That makes for an interesting day.

There is a staff of about 10 responsible for making boxes, traying, setting, transfering, counting and sexing the chickens as well as washing, cleaning and disinfecting everything 2 times a week. Another staff of 11 ships the chicks to our customers.

On March 21 - we shipped 263 orders containing 61,000 chicks, etc. Monday is our 'small' hatch.
On March 23 - we shipped 1016 orders with over 160,000 chicks, etc.

Our hatches will continue to increase in size from now until Easter and then begin to decrease as the weather gets warmer. February - May each year we sell 2/3 of the 4 million chickens that we sell per year.

We box the poultry based on the weather. Often this time of year it is difficult because it was 85 degrees in Texas yesterday, yet we are shipping orders to New York where it is still less than 50.
Again we use passed experiences to ship the orders.

Shipping over 4 million chickens a year we do experience losses but they total less than 2 percent of the birds shipped.
Vent Sexing chickens is a fine art and not 100 percent accurate. The reason we do not sex bantams is not because they are too small to sex, but that they are too small to sex with accuracy and when customers order only 1 or 2 of a breed, the cost to us would out weigh the benifit because so many of the chicks are killed are injured by the method used to vent sex. When we get our breeders in the summer each year we intentionally get about 10% more females than we need because of the sexing error. We do not nor will we ever blend males in our orders.
I am sorry that the customer earlier in the thread received more males than 50%, but that is possible. It's the same as people. Some families have 4 boys and some have 4 girls, yet overall the average population equals out.

As far as shipping chicks older than day old. I don't know what evidence they claim to have of that but at the end of each hatch the building is cleaned, disinfected and sanitized before the next hatch begins, thus all chicks leave the building. Chicks survive only 72 hours on their egg yolk, therefore it would be very poor business practice to ship chicks older than day old. We want to continue to stay in business, shipping poultry to intentionally die would not allow that.

The quality of the birds is hatchery quality and we make no claim that they are show quality and intentionally state that they are not show quality. Show quality chicks would range for 3 to 5 times more than the cost of our chicks. Our poultry is for the back yard poultry person that wants a few chicks to look at or for fresh eggs, or meat. The drawings are representative of the breed and not actual photos. Photos of actual stock mean nothing because they could be of anyones flock and because we turn the flock over ever summer. The pictures shown are what we strive for.

I have tried to address as many questions that have been asked in this thread. Please feel free to contact me directly by sending me a private message or by e-mailing [email protected] or post another comment on this thread with your questions.

Again - thank you all for your business - place your name on our waiting list if you are still interested in chicks. We are currently accepting orders for most breeds by phone for May 11th.

Teri Fuchs Adcox
Vice-President
Ideal Poultry

 

[southdakota]

WOW !!! Doesn't get any better then this. My post was meant to say how VERY pleased I am with the quality of the chicks.
I am a retired USPS rural carrier and I know that the DOA's are from the USPS handling and delays and not the quality of the chicks.
It used to be the truck driver delivering the mail to rural post offices would put chicks in the cab of the truck with him to keep them warm. But a new contractor started hauling mail and refuses to let the chicks in the cab, (says they are "too noisy"...of course they are peeping...they are cold, put them in the cab and they will warm up and shut up.)
For how stressed my survivors had to be by the shipping stress, they have done remarkably well.
Thank you for being such an involved and concerned hatchery owner.

 

[Shady]

I have some chicks shipping on the 12th. Madagascars, Malays, and Buff Leghorns. Plus whatever packing peanuts they send. I originally wanted exchequer leghorns but ended up replacing them with buff since the exchequers weren't laying. Does anyone have any pictures of leghorns from Ideal?
Here are some of the chicks I got from them last year. Originally I think I ordered 7 or 8, and they sent 9 packing peanuts (which I sold). Sadly, the only ones I have left are one Madagascar and a Jersey Giant. I guess I wasn't very lucky with my last batch. Only one of them came sick, though.

 

[cutchens]

I had an absolute awesome experience with Ideal. I ordered 12 cochin chicks. 3 barred(2 female 1 male) 3 silver laced,same combo as the barred. 2 gold laced, 2 blues, a black and a partridge, all female. My chicks are 4 weeks old yesterday and are doing great. My little cockerels are starting to assert themselves in the brooder and all are feathing nicely. If I order from a hatchery again, it will absolutely be with Ideal. Great experience overall.
This is them early on.

This is one of my boys this morning. He is very inquisitive when a hand comes in the brooder. Loves to be held and have his chest scratched.

 

[hollymh]

I love Ideal, Ive ordered twice and haven't experienced any in-transit losses, I did however lose a partridge silkie two nights ago... It of course was my fav chick out of the bunch. I also received a bunch of packing peanuts but such is life. This order I had 2 Japanese bantams, 3 frizzles, 3 polish, and 3 silkies, I ended up with 8 peanuts! They by far have the best shipping prices and my chicks have always thrived and been of decent quality.

 

[IdasChickens]

I have some goslings from Ideal, my ducklings are from Cackle. I'm considering ordering more and I'm still trying to decide where to order from (Cackle, Metzer or Ideal). Did you get the sneezing figured out?

(by the way, I love you avatar--I've got two Siberians)

Hi popsicle!

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I've had my hands FULL (of duckling and chicks...) the last few weeks.

You may have already ordered your birds but just to keep you updated, the rest of my ducks are doing good, so far.
(I have 9 left from the order. I had one Black Swedish DOA on the first order, and one die shortly after arrival on the second order.)

The first order of ducks; 2 Snowy Mallards, 2 Khaki Campbells, and one Blue Swedish, are thriving....and HUGE! All except for one of the KC which is just a bit smaller and lost her down in the first week. She then grew it back and she started to grow bigger once I started giving them all the brewers yeast tabs (niacin).

The other 4 (second order) are Blue and Black Swedish and they are a week younger than the rest.
I had one VERY small Black Swedish arrive in that order, the one who was sneezing.
I then noticed some of the others from the same order sneezing. No watery eyes or nostrils, and their poo seemed normal...not too watery. But still sneezing.

Anyway, I let that go on for several days until I noticed one of the others from the first order sneezing who had not been previously (they were not sharing a brooder but they were/are sharing the same room). At that point I decided to say, "Forget this! "I don't need my whole flock sick!" and started them all on antibiotics.

Now, I know using antibiotics for an "unknown" ailment is not always recommended, because if it is a viral infection, it wont help anyway and we all know the overuse of antibiotics is bad. But, I went for it....I did a week of Duramycin-10 at 0.4 grams per gallon. As I mentioned, I ALSO was adding brewers yeast to their food in addition to electrolytes, vitamins and probiotics (Sav-A-Chick) to their water. AND ALWAYS I offer fresh, un-medicated water in addition to everything else.

Now they have all stopped sneezing and are happy and growing! So, whether it was just some sort of allergy, or dust ( I use TSC litter), or a cold, or vitamin deficiency, or they did actually have a lung infection....unfortunately, I will never know for sure. And using the Duramycin-10 was an absolute LAST resort for us, especially since the package doesn't say anything about ducks, never mind week old ducklings. I probably just got incredibly lucky with this (or, I didn't need the luck to begin with because they were never really sick?)

Anyway....Thanks for asking! Did you place your order? Who did you go with? What did you get?

Best,
Idas Chickens

P.S- We are pretty sure our dog is a Samoyed mix of some type, maybe some Malamute in her too. She's almost 11 years old! She's the greatest dog we've had yet! Love her to bits!!

P.P.S- If you have not ordered your chicks yet, I have read wonderful things about Metzer waterfowl, although, I have no personal experience with them. We are however, happy with the customer service at Ideal, and their shipping rates are great! And as of now, knock on wood, all the duckies (and packing peanut roos) seem to be doing well, even if they needed a little extra care to start.

And lastly, my Snowy Mallards from Ideal are the SWEETEST ducks ever! Very friendly and social...much more than the other ducks. They are the only ones that come up to us when we approach while all the others still run away! Its good we have a "No livestock in the house!" rule, otherwise, I could see these little gals hanging out in the living room with us watching movies!

Sorry about this long post everyone. When I was just starting out, I scoured the internet for as much information and other peoples personal experiences as possible! So, hope this all helps!

 

[jmcgee83]

I ordered 40 they sent 42. I listed them before I even received them. I've sold 15 so I've made all my money back already. So I'm OK with it. I'm ordering one from cackle seeing if they are any better for variety. I'm not sure what breed I want so I'm going to keep a little from each I get. And just slowly keep selling chicks. I'm keeping the runts and chicks that have pecked eyes. I've always been partial to the needy animals.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

We did a group order up here, then we can split the cost of the health papers. I got Lav Silkies and Pilgrams