- Feb 28, 2012
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Yesterday (05/02/12) we made the 1 hour 20 min. drive up to Poultry Hollow Hatchery it was a nice drive until we got to Wilkerson Hollow Ln (the road that this hatchery is on)...we had to drive a long ways back...the further we drove the more we worried where we were going because the road was getting bumpier and the houses were getting junkier...and then all of the sudden we saw a nice in-ground pool and a nice cabin house and a sign that said Poultry Hollow Hatchery we made it to the Hatchery, finally. The first thing we see is 2 goats 2 dogs and several beautiful roosters running around. when we got out I saw what looked to be about 15 Black Cochin pullets (older pullets probably a few months old) and 1 or 2 grown black cochin roosters in a maybe a 10x10 enclosure they had several Frizzled Black cochins in that pen and some had bare backs and it was red but I assumed that they were in molt. but as we saw more of their chickens I was wondering if they really were in molt of if they had something wrong with them. and then they had what looked to be breeding pens they were about the size of a medium sized dog crate with 3 Polish in it 2 hens and 1 rooster and what made me a mad was that they were all 3 different colors the rooster was buff and one of the hens was white..so apparently they are not breeding for true color...then there was a big old barn that had a terrible ordor, of course when you have 1,000's birds it will stink. the barn was full of brooder boxes and grow out pens full of chicks...there is no telling how many chicks of all ages they had I know they had at least 20 brooders full of chicks each brooder probably had 100 or more chicks in them they also had grow out pens they were stuffed with older chicks (4-6 week old)...another thing I did not like about their set-up was that they had 2-3 different breeds of chicks in each grow out pen...and they had 2-3 different breeds of chicks in each brooder and some they did not even know what breeds were in the brooders...and a lot of them had "poopy but" which is to be expected with that many chicks but she would just pull the poop off with out even wetting it to make it come off easier, she made one bleed really bad by doing that..I would not be surprised if that one did not live...that is how bad she made it bleed. Then we went to the other side of the barn that had some more brooders because that was where the Specled Sussex chicks were and she said that "they got wet yesterday because their water jug busted" and they have automatic waters and when the jug busted the water from the tube sprayed all over them...must have been sugar water or something because their fluff is crunchy and stuck together. Then she had her son to go to the incubators and bring some silkies out for us and when he as carrying them to the brooder he must have dropped one on the ground and either did not know or did not care, so it was running around on the ground outside, so we got that silkie along with three others. But to say the least we were not happy at all with the hatchery and their set up for their brooders or the way that they breed their chickens. But all the chicks seem pretty healthy and happy to be in a clean brooder with less chicks. and we will never buy any thing from them again...if we ever have to get more for what ever reason we will order from Cackle or Mcmurray or similar.
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