Just an update - we ordered 18 female bantam chicks from My Pet Chicken in August. One died in transit, the others were alive. One struggled, but a good three days of vitamins and it was doing well. Not too bad for tiny bantams. MPC was extremely responsive, immediately refunding for the dead chick and checking back in to see how the weak chick fared.
At this point (8 months later), we are very pleased. Only wanted to keep 5 or 6, and sold the rest (we wanted to pick the best personalities so we got more than we needed). All were indeed girls - we kept them until that was positive
. We got Easter eggers, wellsummers, d'uccles, brahmas, and polish. We ended up rehoming an ee, the wellsummers, two d'uccles, two polish, and the brahmas. Kept 3 ees, a polish, and a d'uccles. Very very pleased. They started laying at 5-6 months. All three ees laid blue eggs! We have a brown, a white, and a black and white ee. Our polish is super personable, as is our d'uccles. I don't keep a roo, so I only keep very very mellow birds. The others went to friends, and all are very happy with them. At 8 months, all three ee's went broody.
Summary - we got a good assortment (5 breeds in 18 birds), happy with the birds, all female.
