I love ideal. I certainly wouldn't day they have the best when it comes to looking up to the standard though
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Here's my long story about them, and why I'd use them again. I'm in SW Michigan.I'm probably going to go with Mt. Healthy.
Thanks! Like you pointed out, it will be a risk no matter what. I might just have to try out different hatcheries to see which one I like the best.Something to keep in mind is that, with questions like this, you'll often end up with as many different answers as you'll have people answering. With things like death rate of shipped chicks, someone living in one part of the country can have a vastly different experience from someone in another part of the country, even if ordering the exact same breed from the exact same hatchery in the exact same week. What makes the difference there is the postal workers between you and the hatchery, and how well they handle the chicks in transport. So a hand full of bad experiences with shipping and chicks arriving weak or dead does not necessarily mean that that hatchery is no good to order from ever. Remember, if they were always that bad with shipping their chicks, they would rapidly go out of business--for every bad experience that is posted about, there are dozens and dozens more experiences that were not posted because everything went fine.
As far as quality and lifelong health of the birds goes, I only have personal experience with Meyer Hatchery, from whom I was satisfied with what I got and most of my birds seemed to be of good quality as far as standard goes. I just lost my last hen from my very first order from them last month, and that first order was 11 years ago, so based on my experience lack of longevity is certainly not a problem with their birds. I don't often buy hatchery chicks anymore (I also hatch my own or buy hatching eggs from other breeders if I'm looking for something different), but if I just want a hand full of pullets of random breeds just for fun in my mixed flock I'll grab a few from Meyer. It's a day trip for me from where I live, but I always drive out to pick them up from the hatchery rather than have them shipped. Just personal preference on that.
I can't comment on the health of any other hatchery's birds, but as far as breed standard goes, I have not heard good things about the quality of Ideal's stock, and the pictures I've seen of McMurray and Mt Healthy's stock has not been great to my eye, either. However, Cackle is supposed to have higher quality stock in general, so the above posts about them are a bit of a surprise to me!