Welp Hatchery...What a joke

[malndobe]

I just found the fine print on their website, which states "We guarantee Welp-Line pullets to be 90% accurate to sex. If more than 10% cockerels, we will refund the difference between pullet and cockerel price. Claims must be made within 8 weeks of hatch."

I didn't know what the genders were going to be within 8 weeks of hatch, with some of the birds it wasn't obvious until they were quite a bit older. But I already got an email back from Welp, and they are going to honor the 90% (4 or more of the original 35). I lost around 1/3-1/2 of the original order to predators, but just in the birds I have left I still have 5-10 cockerels, I have to go get an accurate head count and make the final determination on a few of them.

 

[JRNash]

I've Ordered from Ideal,McMurray,and most recently Welp. I've had excellent results from ALL THREE hatcheries. I've received the numbered amounts, 25plus, and knock on wood have never experienced a loss in shipping or during brooding stage.

 

[JRNash]

I ordered 25 welp slow broilers in mid July this year. The temps and humidity here in Southeast texas were off the charts. The chicks arrived healthy with NO losses. They were immediately given water with probiotics and a boiled goose egg. I'm. Very happy with my purchase.

 

[JRNash]

As to the service. I made a mistake in the shipping address. The lady at welp corrected MY MISTAKE,and answered a slew of questions both by phone and with Emails. My experience with Welp may not be the same as others of you have had. I was treated in a professional manner and will buy from them again

 

[GitaBooks]

I've Ordered from Ideal,McMurray,and most recently Welp. I've had excellent results from ALL THREE hatcheries. I've received the numbered amounts, 25plus, and knock on wood have never experienced a loss in shipping or during brooding stage.

I ordered 25 welp slow broilers in mid July this year. The temps and humidity here in Southeast texas were off the charts. The chicks arrived healthy with NO losses. They were immediately given water with probiotics and a boiled goose egg. I'm. Very happy with my purchase.

As to the service. I made a mistake in the shipping address. The lady at welp corrected MY MISTAKE,and answered a slew of questions both by phone and with Emails. My experience with Welp may not be the same as others of you have had. I was treated in a professional manner and will buy from them again

Its nice to know that people who work at these hatcheries really want people to have healthy chicks. I'm glad things went so well.

 

[malndobe]

I've purchased from all the hatcheries. My only complaint about Welp is the need to go back and redo their gender identification classes. McMurray (a number of orders) and Ideal (1 order) have been 100% accurate on the genders. Welp was only about 60% accurate. Which means a LOT of roosters, when I only wanted hens. I ordered 7 different breeds, and only 1 breed was accurate gender wise. In one of the breeds 3 of the 5 "pullets" were cockerels.
I need to check my credit card statement, they did say they would make it right. But that doesn't reimburse me for the shipping, feed to grow the birds to a sexable age, trying to find the roosters homes or butcher them (very expensive meat since they weren't meat breeds), and having to order again from elsewhere to get the final numbers I wanted.

 

[lazy gardener]

I got one group of chicks from MMc that was 100% wrong. Ordered 3 pullets, got 3 roos, and this from auto-sexing breed! My first year with this breed, and I knew the minute I laid eyes on them that they'd sexed them wrong! In their favor, they did agree to make it right by replacing them with 3 pullets of that breed (sent to hdw. store) the following spring per my request. Beware the fine print that says they'll only reimburse the difference between the price of pullets and cockrels, and then, only the difference in the number of mis-labeled chicks greater than the 90/10% guarantee. IMO, they should reimburse the entire price of the chick. Or, they should re-ship the correct gender without the customer having to pay the shipping.

 

[Bigwig]

Mount Healthy Hatchery sells healthy chicks. The only downside is that they don't sell as many different breeds as most other hatcheries.

 

[triple j farms]

Welp Hatchery is terrible. I have received chicks that were almost all dead. Then the next shipment to replace them they are droppings like flies.I have got chicks from other Hatcherys like cackle and meyer and had none die. I am not impressed with welp's at all.

 

[SpringNAllChics]

I've had wonderful service from any of the three hatcheries I've ordered from over the decades that I've been ordering chicks. One year the Welps CS helped me plan out my pastured poultry startup per organic feed to order in for the first run, and she even had a couple of suggestions for attracting new clients. Of them all, Welps is the first one I check with, for pricing is usually the best through them, and their meat chicks seem to grow out faster. I feel like I received CS as if the person on the other is was a long time beloved family friend! This is not to detract from any of the other three hatcheries I've contacted CS, but Welps stood out head and shoulders above the others for me and my operation.

I have had a shipment of frozen chicks one year, I revived a few of them but they died a few days later anyway. The package had been left outside on a loading dock by the transporter! They replaced the whole order.

As far as roos, if anyone gets too many roos and wants a place for them, they can come here! I'm in the Chambersburg/Gettysburg/Hanover area of south central PA and travel south quite often so we could arrange to meet sometime.

Also, I noticed that someone mentioned predator issues. I have a few layers of protection for my peeps but vermin are attracted to that fresh spring meat and will move in on you some years! Take more than one simultaneous approaches to this issue because some of those evil demons learn from seeing others caught on glue boards and traps! For those wily ones, the only chance is a good, strong calico cat and her well trained daughters!


If it's larger predators, I raise predator control dogs and provide experienced young Maremma teams with perhaps a finished adult Maremma on the team for those new to lgd's. We do have to be selective about who can get one of our Maremma or one of our teams but we have found them to be the most effective and most biologically ecological method of predation deterrent against most predators even those winged eagles and birds of prey. Those winged predators are allowed to prey on wild birds and rabbits, etc but if they stoop on one of our farm birds they are batted gently off the bird and allowed to fly away unharmed to more appropriate prey. Ravens though are escorted across the property till they leave even the neighbor's vicinity, lol Not sure what the ravens have done but they get short shrift! I do wish I could get my camera into play when I see these awesome predator control specialists at work!

I hope you find some ideas that help from my post, or at least enjoy reading and seeing my pics!