- Nov 15, 2012
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Wow, your Welp order did much better than mine. Mine supposedly left on Tuesday, but they didn't get scanned at the post office of origin, so no one is really sure, however the shipping label was made on Tuesday and the box shows they should have left Lubbock, TX for MSP via Fedex that day. So hatched Tuesday moring and at the air mail center before 5pm leaving on a plane at 11pm. Apparently should have been at MSP by 7am (why a 2 hour flight should take 9 hours, I do not know). And this is where it gets dicey. They were not scanned in at the St Paul mail center for sorting until 10:30pm Thursday. When my local PO called on Friday morning about 6am, my first question was "are they alive" (fearing the absolute worst). Apparently there was peeping from the box so DH drove right over and got them. Upon opening the box, it was like a holocaust. Most of the chicks were frozen or nearly frozen. We put anything standing upright immediately in the brooder. We then attempted to warm any that were still breathing, but not yet gasping. We managed to revive about 8-10, however all but two of those have succumbed to the effects of hypothermia since then. Out of 33, we are left with 10 live, thriving chicks. I think these will all live, they are eating well and seem to have grown significantly since arrival. Sadly, all of our bantam Polish perished. We are left with 1 bantam white faced black spanish, 3 bantam barred cochin and 6 bantam dark cornish. Not a single extra chick in the box, despite what Welp says about putting in extras just in case some of them die. I'll be making the call to the hatchery tomorrow to report the losses and schedule a re-ship for the end of next month (which is apparently the next time they will have the availablility.)
I have had mixed results with shipped chicks this time of year. I try not to order from any state not touching MN so they don't have to get on a plane. However, Welp was less than forthcoming up front about where these chicks would ship from and they ended up coming from New Mexico. They had what DH wanted to get so we ordered from them. We'll re-order in hopes the shipping system doesn't lose them again, but won't do it a third time (if these show up frozen, we'll just get a refund and find a new source). McMurray has been good. We got some from them a couple years ago after a disasterous box of chick-sicles from Meyer at the end of March and the McMurray birds shipped on a Monday and arrived Tuesday very early AM without one single loss. I just with they had a few more breeds. I may wait until May to see about getting a few more things I wanted (like a cockrel from Lancaster Fancy Fowl for my d'Uccle flock) just to be sure they get here in good shape. However, given the time frame for trying a meat bird project, we really needed to start our first batch about now, so waiting another month will be a bit of a setback. If I wasn't so smitten by the bantams, I would never order via the mail, but the bantam choices locally are rather limited and any feed store, etc who ever has them seem to only have a mixed bin, which doesn't work for what I'm doing. I might have to sometime get some bantam favorelles from Minne sometime though - those sure are cute.
