newbie wondering, ideal or mcmurray?

[iluvwyandottes]

hi. I will be ordering chicks somewhere in september. hopefully 2 BR, 2 SLW, and maybe a RIR. Tell me who you'd choose.

 

[Matt A NC]

Mcmurray requires 25 chicks minimum.
Ideal requires a minimum of $25 per order.

Alot of the breeds at both hatcheries are sold out for the year, but the 3 you have chosen are more common breeds.

Ideal is a bit cheaper on their birds and shipping. The down side is that they add extra Roos to keep the few you order warm. I beleive above 15 chicks and they stop adding the extras during warm months.

Matt

 

[gritsar]

I was really impressed with my Ideal chicks and their customer service. They are the closest to me too.

 

[GlacierNan]

Well I ordered chicks in May from Ideal and they arrived safely. Very healthy and pretty. They are still healthy good looking girls, and all girls by the way. I added and changed my order twice and they were very kind through it all.
I like Ideal

but I hear good things about McMurray also!

I don't think you would go wrong with either one

 

[silkiechicken]

Pick the one closest. You'll probably need to order more than you want and then sell the ones you don't need, in order to ensure enough warmth for the birds to make it to you in the mail alive.

 

[sticks22]

I would order from Ideal. My personal choice. Their prices are cheaper and since they may add extra roos, that will give you lots more choices as to which roo you want to breed. Plus the extra roos will give you some extra meat for your faimily. I always butcher the roos first. They will gain the most weight between roos and hens. Next spring Im gonna build an extra coop just for the roos!
You should also order a few more roos just in case a few of your chicks die. If one or two of them die you problably wont be able to tell if it was a male or female until they start getting older. If your roo had died youd have to order more if you decided to breed them for more chicks. Which brings me to realize that in order for me too keep a running supply of chickens Im gonna to hatch chicks each year to try and "recoop" (pun) some of my money. Start-up costs can be abit exspensive to say the least, building the coop, buying the waterer, feeders, hay for the run, feed, oyster shell, etc! It all adds up.
Youll also enjoy the feeling of hatching your own supply of meat (if you butcher) and eggs! you can also sell the chicks at local swap meets of flea markets and earn some of your money back for the cost of feed and maybe make a small profit to boot!

 

[silkieluvr]

I had a terrible experience with ideal. BUt then again, I did order bantams. But we had an order of 20 mille fleur d'ucles, just to ensure in case any died that we would have some left. Every single mille died! And this happened twice!! I would reccommend Murray McMurray who in my opinion has better quality birds too, even if the prices are a little bit more expensive.

 

[miss_jayne]

so far, i have had a great experience with McMurray. i haven't used Ideal.

i have also ordered from Meyer and they rocked.

have some coming from Mt. Healthy, we'll see.

 

[EliteTempleton]

I'd post a wanted add in the BYC forums BST section to see if I could find any locally.

 

[Henrietta23]

We ordered from both in April. I already had the McMurray order in when I decided I wanted Barnevelders, Welsummers and Russian Orloffs. Ideal had those as day old sexed chicks. McMurray's didn't. So we kept our McMurray order as is (we ordered with someone else) and placed a separate order with someone on here for the others. The Ideal order was delayed a few times, I believe because all the chicks weren't available but otherwise everything was okay. Ideal is a bit farther from us and we lost both the orloff chicks within 24 hours. We ordered 8 chicks from Mcmurray and lost one within 36 hours. I wasn't the person ordering in either case but we are happy with the birds that survived. I'd go with the one closest to you as someone else suggested.