Anyone have problems with ordering chicks from McMurrey Hatchery?

[RobinEgg]

We have always used MMM and always been very satisfied with their service, our order this year came the first week of april just as planned and every one (73 of them) are great. Sounds as if alot of your problem may have been postal service not MMM.

 

[MissPrissy]

I have always used MM and have never had problems. The one time I did have an issue it was taken care of asap.

If you are giving them sugar water that is most likely the cause of the pasty butt. Sugar water is a laxative.

Sugar water is recommended for stressed chicks for a quick pick me up. Nothing more than that. It is just something common people have on hand in the kitchen and its usuage and advice for using is often misused.

The best thing to have on had is a quik chik drink mix for vitamins and electrolytes. If you don't have that honey water works better than sugar water.

If the chicks got chilled they could also have pasty butt and development problems and the sugar water makes the pasty butt much worse.

In the world of raising chicks the average is to expect a 25% loss in the first 10 days. You have another window of loss around the time the pullets reach laying age. It is a sad but try fact of raising chicks and chickens. Chicks getting chilled is often fatal as their little bodies can't recover from it easily.

Sorry you are having troubles.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

We ordered from MM and got our chicks on April 7, as promised. The PO called us at 6:30 a.m.

We ordered 31 total birds, of about 7 different kinds of layers, + the free chick. We received 32 birds. The packing peanut was an easter egger, and this was marked on the invoice. The free chick turned out to be an easter egger, too. MM also went out of their way to try to sex our blue-laced red Wyandottes, which we didn't ask them to do (straight run). They did a pretty good job, too. We have a higher proportion of pullets than I'd expect due to chance. They noted that they'd tried to send us females on the invoice.

All chicks arrived in wonderful shape. We had a few pasty butts, but no serious problems. We did cull one barred rock b/c she wasn't developing feathers like all of the others, and after doing some research we found that some barred rocks have a mutation that causes them to be very slow growers and take a long time to develop feathers. The mutation was correlated with extremely poor egg production, so we culled her.

Erika



Overall very happy with MM. We'd order from them again.

 

[reveriereptile]

The sugar water we gave them was only for the weak ones (already had some pasty butts) and only for 15 minutes then switched to regular water. Haven't had anymore die but one wasn't doing to well last night but looks better today. Must of been the hoilday that slowed up the mail. The package said they were hatched out on the 24th.

 

[Dorothy1324]

I do think that them being in a box in shipment for 3 days was probably too long mine from murry mcmurry were shipped on Saturday and on Sunday the postal shipping center about 45 min away called and said they were there we went and got them and all was fine everyone happy healthy and fluffy i would do business with them again any day.