Ideal Poultry!

[GotGame]

*Removed material*
I cant speak for you but we got all our chicks in and every one of them is thriving....not a sick one in the bunch, and every chick with the exception of one has correct color for the variety they are...

 

[GotGame]

That one looks like a white crested blue polish to me...

This one looks like a White Crested Blue Polish Splash to me...you will get splashes anytime you breed a blue variety...

This one could be a columbian duccle or a mille fleur duccle with minimal mottling. You will get birds lacking mottling in show quality lines of mille fleurs, mottled and spangled birds. They are actually very useful as many come with too much mottling, these will help counter that in the breed pen. It seems pretty obvious what they are, now are they what you ordered? No idea but if you had looked around their site at all you would have found these pictures. If they are the wrong variety I am sure ideal would have rectified it as it seems that at least 95% of the people on here have had nothing but good experiences with ideal...

 

[IdealisticRoo]

Well said, GotGame!

Repetitious pictures of pretty chickens that look healthy, but don't quite match the standard picture are BORING! As is reading complaints from people (yes, I am referring to you, AlbanyDog) who seem to have nothing good to say!

A word of advice, AlbanyDog, slanderous comments about upright businesses allegedly "buying" the BBB are a good way to get sued or at least the BYC title "BANNED" appearing below your name!

We are all sorry to hear that you are not pleased with your experience with Ideal, but you seem to be an isolated case. Please move on, it cannot be good for your own well-being to hold a grudge like this.

I know I am not a chicken expert, but your pictures of your Ideal birds are pretty and they seem to have healthy, happy postures!

Edited for clarity - IR

 

[speckledhen]

Material has been removed that violates this BYC rule:

3. No Flaming (verbally attacking people or groups of people - e.g. a profession, an organization, a company.)

Every business that has been around as long as Ideal is bound to have complaints from time to time; it's just the nature of a business, especially one that deals in live animals.​

 

[Ridgerunner]

Taken from another thread. These comments are by an employee of Ideal.

You will notice that Ideal charges hatchery prices for their chicks, not show quality prices. Their target market is the backyard flock, not someone looking for show quality chickens. I don't know how many chicks Ideal ships a week, I'd expect approaching 100,00 but I don't know. Evenif it is half this number, an occasional mistake can be understood.

Hello all, This is Teri from Ideal. It was said earlier that we were not commenting for 'obvious' reasons. That is not the case. We do come on the board about once a week and see what is going on. We do not have an employee that constantly 'monitors' the board.

The video was of the hatchery operation itself because that is what Purina wanted for their television show. We have not done anything on location at the farm but will look into it. Back when I was in school at A&M, I did some very unprofessional videos of the farm and most people found it really boring.

I am going to try my best to address the topics brought up in this thread. If I miss something, you are welcome to send a follow up message. I will subscribe to this topic so I will see your responses and be able to reply to them.

Ideal Poultry has a very large breeding farm about 8 miles out of Cameron in Pettibone, TX. We have approximately 60,000 chickens, bantams, ducks, geese and guineas on the farm. There is a picture of the farm shown briefly in the video, as well as a photo of the farm in the about us section on our website .

We have our own breeders for all of the poultry we sell other than the following: all turkeys, french guineas, chukar and pheasant.

We have not purchased breeders from an outside source since 1999. 1999 is when we ventured into the 'rare' side of the poultry business. Since that time, each summer we start a new breeding flock by selecting our breeders based on the Standard of Perfection. In the late 90's when we were building our rare flock, Mr. Fuchs did go all over the country to try to buy the best of the best. He ordered breeding stock that was 'show quality, high dollar' stock. Even by purchasing the offspring of show champion poultry, many chicks we received were what you all would call, hatchery quality. It takes a lot of culling once the birds mature to even get close to the Standard. All three Mr. Fuchs' that are involved in the selection process hold a Poultry Science degree from Texas A & M, with the elder Mr. Fuchs holding a Master degree in genetics.

There are times when we are sold out of a breed, that we might have an order drop shipped from another hatchery. However, it is a hatchery that has quality poultry and in most cases it is a hatchery that we sold breeding stock to.

Our breeding stock is mated on an average of one male per ten hens.

We do not claim to have nor advertise to have 'show quality' poultry. In fact we very clearly state otherwise in our literature.

Anyone that is involved in showing poultry would know that our prices are not indicative of show quality poultry.

The purpose hatcheries serve is to provide good quality poultry at a reasonable price, to the average farmer that wants to enjoy the beauty of the poultry or have farm fresh eggs. We do our best to provide quality poultry to all of our customers as well as provide excellent customer service. It would not be in our best interest to do otherwise. We have been in business since 1937 and will celebrate our 75th anniversary next year. We have not survived this long by providing an inferior product.

Like another post said it's about knowing what you want for both the buyer and seller. Our primary customer is the backyard farmer. That is who our product is priced for and marketed for.

Please respond with any other questions you might have and I will do my best to answer them.

Teri Fuchs Adcox
V-P Ideal Poultry

 

[IdealisticRoo]

Quote:
What breed/ variety is Bo? He looks like a Partridge Wyandotte, I love that color pattern!

 

[Eglyntine]

Quote:
He is a Golden Laced Wyandotte, if I could have gotten him to stand still for 2 more seconds I would have had a really awesome picture of him from the front and you could see how beautiful his lacing is on his breast.

For farm quality chickens I got some really awesome beautiful almost perfect looking breeds from Ideal that's for sure. I am a big fan of the Wyandottes, I have been trying to justify purchasing some Partridge Wyandottes for weeks now.

We'll see.

 

[Eglyntine]

For those that were wondering if the Ideal birds go broody and how well they do, I wanted to post a few pictures of my new hatch out. So far two chicks have hatched out! Not a good ratio but still very exciting. The Dad is a Black Australorp and you can definitely tell. the chicks are almost completely pure black. Both of the babies hatched out from light brown eggs so I am going to say their Moms are from my Ideal Wyandottes. I had two eggs try to hatch out but just stopped in the middle of it. So we would have had four by now if not for that.

I took some pictures of the Mama and babies:

This is the first baby that hatched out yesterday, I just love her colour, it is like she is made out of black velvet:

This is one of my Ideal Golden-Laced Wyandotte hens that I put on the nest after 3 of 6 (one of my Silver-Laced Wyandottes) got up and did not come back:

This is new Mama with the first baby:

I watched this baby hatch this morning, it was so cool. I should have taken out the camera the first time so I could have gotten it on video but I did not think about it until it was too late:

And that's it for now, I am still going to try to get a hatching out on video, I just have to remember to take out the camera every time.

 

[IdealisticRoo]

Quote:
OH, WOW! Congratulations! SO exciting to watch babies hatch!

Two of my Ideal birds went broody REALLY young, one at 4 months and one at 6 months. Sadly, the 4 month old got off her nest and never came back! Now, at 6 months, my Blue Splash Bantam Wyandotte is on day 8!

 

[StevenW.]

Quote:
This is a hatchery not a breeder. If you wanted quality birds then you should have ordered from a breeder. Period.