Bad Experience w/IDEAL Poultry Hatchery: Normal Occurrence?

[Venevee]

I ordered from ideal poultry last year, ordered 10 ameraucana pullets, now they are 7 months old and laying green eggs. Come to find out, they are easter egger hens! Not even ameraucanas!!!

Ameraucanas, or also known as Araucanas are Easter eggers. "Easter Eggers" are just a nickname for them since they lay colored eggs.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Ameraucanas, or also known as Araucanas are Easter eggers. "Easter Eggers" are just a nickname for them since they lay colored eggs.

Well, that's completely inaccurate. Ameracaunas, Aracaunas, and Easter Eggers (sometimes deceptively called "Americanas") are three different things, with the first two being recognized by the APA and the third not, as there is no clear cut breed standard. Too many hatcheries deceptively use the Ameracauna and/or Aracauna name for their Easter Eggers, which of course perpetuates the confusion, and it trickles down to the feed stores and individuals that then sell "Ameracaunas" and "Aracaunas" that came from these hatcheries.

 

[Venevee]

Well, that's completely inaccurate. Ameracaunas, Aracaunas, and Easter Eggers (sometimes deceptively called "Americanas") are three different things, with the first two being recognized by the APA and the third not, as there is no clear cut breed standard. Too many hatcheries deceptively use the Ameracauna and/or Aracauna name for their Easter Eggers, which of course perpetuates the confusion, and it trickles down to the feed stores and individuals that then sell "Ameracaunas" and "Aracaunas" that came from these hatcheries.

Ohh, I always thought Easter Eggers was just a nickname. That's what I read before somewhere, and I thought Ameracaunas and Aracaunas were the same breed. I don't know a whole lot about these, I specialize in Barbu d'Uccles and Barbu d'Anvers. There is clearly just a whole mix up with that breed, and the feed stores and hatcheries aren't really helping. That's probably how I got confused in the first place was because of them!

 

[BamaChickMama]

I can not speak of IDEAL because I have never used them, but I do work for the U.S. Postal Service. We handle a LOT of chicken shipments and they are not treated well during shipment. No water, No Feed, No Heat, just another package. Many times chickens arrive on our dock with many already dead. And this is from many different hatcheries. These are usually day old chicks and there is "Shipping Stress". Imagine putting your day old daughter in a box and shipping her!!!

Using the Postal Service "Express Mail' for your shipment is their best chance to survive the "shipping stress".
Never use "Priority Mail" to ship live animals.

My personal opinion from Alabama

 

[RareDuck]

Have gotten 3 shipments of chicks from Ideal 2 day Priority and all the chicks arrived alive. I lost one chick from each of the 2 bantam orders. I got 2 shipments from Metzer 2 day Priority all arrived alive. The 6 goslings I got last year had Grogel to eat in transit. Metzer provides Grogel for all their birds now. I have ordered birds since 1991 and have never had any arrive dead. None of the birds I have ordered were shipped Express Mail. I have read stories of birds shipped that way being lost in transit or arriving late with dead birds.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

I placed an order on 3/9 for a 3/15 shipment of the bantam special and received a confirmation email. Well, today has come and gone and my card has not been charged and I did not get a shipment email. I'm not sure what happened but I'm a bit irritated and I didn't get to call them because I've been at work all day

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Update: The chicks arrived today and my card was charged last night. 1 chick died in transit. They used a big two compartment box with extra bedding to make the compartments smaller. One chick was dead in the box and one died shortly after I picked them up.

It looks like they sent me all clean legged chicks. I was hoping to end up with a dark brahma or gold laced cochin bantam Once again, they did include a good looking variety it seems, as far as colors go.

ETA It does look like they had some grogel in there, which my last shipment last month did not, and I did not pay extra for it.

 

[TattooedChicks]

I've had my shipment of bantams from Ideal for a few weeks now. To say the least, I'm very disappointed and can't afford to order from these folks again in the future. I did a hatchery choice special and bought 20 birds. All arrived happy, healthy, and with lots of variety. But at this point I doubt I have more than 3-4 pullets in the whole group. Nearly all are developing large combs, redness in said combs, and are play fighting pretty intensely. If it had been an even split l wouldn't be so frustrated, but this seems pretty bad for odds. After spending all that money, I would have been better off buying the expensive sexed chicks from MPC or driving over an hour to the nearest hatchery and picking them out myself. I will have to cull nearly my entire flock soon as I will not want to feed 17 roosters that long. I will not be using Ideal again after this purchase.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

That's why I only order the specials, really. I paid $45 shipped for 25 birds and they sent 29, so a cost of $1.56 a bird . Even if I only have 5 pullets to sell, I get all my money back and anything I keep is a freebie. Generally I do not order specific breeds from them, though, just because I have had a lot of losses from them in the past (refunded, of course) and the quality of those specific breeds was not that great.

I had an abnormally high number of males in this order but in the past I think it's been right at a 50/50 split, with the exception of bantam cochins and bantam brahmas which usually end up being male.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

I'm heading to a chicken swap on Saturday so I went ahead and ordered a bantam special + 3 dark brahma bantams with the intention of selling the majority of the chicks at the swap. We'll see how it goes! Also hoping to give away a bunch of my cockerels that I ended up with from the last batch. I was wrong in my last post and out of 25 chicks I got 10 boys, which is not bad at all but I still don't want to butcher them.