Bad Experience with Bresse Farms in Pontotoc, MS

[chickfused]

I have to say my experience with this place is also negative. I ordered 24 hatching eggs from them, SFH and Cream Legbar. The Cream Legbar were FILTHY. The Swedish Flower eggs are such a wide variety of colors and mixes that I am not convinced they are actually SF chickens. There's two that are simply _white_. We'll find out, I'm getting some hatching. Of the 24 eggs I ordered, 9 were infertile. Seller does not respond to inquiries well, or at all in some cases. Never again.

I will say hatching egg packaging was top notch, and their NPIP certification is current. (I checked before ordering.)

Edit: The white egg actually did turn into a SF chicken! Must be suuuper lightly tinted and I just can't see it.

 

[KW Farms]

I ordered a dozen White Bresse hatching eggs from the Bresse Farms in Mississippi. I received 13. One egg was badly cracked on arrival. Upon inspecting the egg shell it was extremely brittle and the egg was watery. All of the eggs were covered in poop. All of the eggs were very elongated. Two more cracked in my egg turner just because they were so elongated that they didn’t fit properly. After inspecting those two again very brittle shell and the insides were 100% scrambled and watery. Due to the brittle shells I was hesitant to candle the eggs or handle them too much. I even changed incubators due to the egg turner issue. One more cracked slightly just gently moving it to the new incubator but I tried to save it with some candle wax. I emailed Justin several times. He ignored my concerns about dirty misshaped brittle eggs. He said let me know your hatch rate and we will make it right. So of course zero hatched. Waited until day 25. My son and I inspected the eggs. All were very brittle. All were very watery and scrambled and no development whatsoever. I called Justin and he said if I wanted to order live chicks he would give me five for free. This would have equaled roughly half of my $70 investment. Keep in mind with shipping I wasted $70 on eggs plus had to run out and spend another $150 on a different style incubator to try to save the hatch. I agreed to the five free chicks and placed an order for 15 chicks. It was after this that I read a ton of bad reviews including on Good Egg Bad Egg a lady that ordered pullets from him that were so infested with lice that she had to cull them. Out of fear of bringing parasites and disease onto my property I just emailed Justin and canceled my second order. I did get an $80 refund on my second order since it had not shipped yet but I don’t even know at this point if I want to try to get a refund on my original egg order of $70. I think I may just chalk it up to learning a valuable lesson and move on with my life. I don’t like to argue and it seems he does not like refunding people. Meanwhile I plan on ordering hatching eggs from the other Bresse Farm in Florida that has really good reviews. I know shipping eggs are a gamble because USPS is not gentle in handling packages but the lice thing freaked me out. I think eggs are safer from a biosecurity standpoint.

Sorry about your bad experience. Sounds like the “same old same old” with this breeder.

 

[Tonyroo]

I have to say my experience with this place is also negative. I ordered 24 hatching eggs from them, SFH and Cream Legbar. The Cream Legbar were FILTHY. The Swedish Flower eggs are such a wide variety of colors and mixes that I am not convinced they are actually SF chickens. There's two that are simply _white_. We'll find out, I'm getting some hatching. Of the 24 eggs I ordered, 9 were infertile. Seller does not respond to inquiries well, or at all in some cases. Never again.

I will say hatching egg packaging was top notch, and their NPIP certification is current. (I checked before ordering.)

Edit: The white egg actually did turn into a SF chicken! Must be suuuper lightly tinted and I just can't see it.

You have a picture of the SFH chick from the white egg. Can you take one picture of the chick and one the egg it came from.

 

[chickfused]

The egg is long since gone. The chick that came out of it looks like this:

 

[Tonyroo]

The egg is long since gone. The chick that came out of it looks like this:

View attachment 3068990

You have 2 more chicks with that head marking and pattern in the picture. To me it doesn't look like a SFH chick.

 

[Tonyroo]

I hope I'm wrong. They will show there true self in 6 weeks old. Juveniles have very distinct color patterns, it's unmistakable. Of course they won't look like that as adults.

 

[chickfused]

I believe that it is. One that looked exactly like it came directly out of a proper brown egg. This photo is not my babies. Thank you!

 

[Hayes Homestead]

I had a terrible experience with Bresse Farms (bressefarms.com) in Pototoc, MS. I ordered 20 Swedish Flower Hen chicks @ $9.99 each on 2/9/21 totaling $259.80 (including $60 for shipping.) I contacted them about a shipping date and Justin (owner) said they were shooting for shipment on 3/8/21. All good! The chicks actually ended up shipping two months later on 4/6/21. So shipping got delayed by a month. That's okay, I know things happen. They were received on 4/8/21. There were 21 chicks - 1 deceased on arrival, 20 others active and healthy. Shipping box was great. Two heat packs and four cups filled with growgel. I thought everything was great until I started inspecting these chicks more carefully. I soon found out my order was completely wrong. Here's what I received:

11 Rhode Island Reds
6 Swedish Flower Hens (2 with vaulted skulls)
2 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes
1 Blue Bresse
1 Mystery Chick (Deceased, did not examine)

Once I realized I had a bunch of Rhode Island Reds in the order, I contacted Justin (owner). I sent him high quality photos of the chicks and asked politely if there was a mistake because these look like Rhode Island Reds. Keep in mind this farm also raises Bresse (black, blue, white), Rhode Island Reds, and Blue Laced Red Wyandottes. He reassured me there was no mistake and that I had 20 Swedish Flower Hens. However, contradicting himself he did say there should be 4-5 RIRs there for additional warmth. Well, I only received one extra chick. He said to let them develop and if they made a mistake they would make it right. I left it at that for the time being, but started speaking with Swedish Flower Hen breeders. All of them said these were definitely not Swedish Flower Hens. I then examined the chicks further and found two Blue Laced Red Wyandottes in the group. Their flat combs made it obvious. Lastly, I realized a blue chick was growing larger than the others and had blue legs and beak. Swedish Flowers legs/beaks should be yellow or white. It is definitely a blue Bresse. There were also two chicks with vaulted skulls. I believe these are Swedish Flower Hens. However, this is a trait culled for, but normally you would not get these in the first place as it comes from breeding crested to crested. Only non-crested should be bred to crested so you do not have this problem. The remaining four chicks appear to be Swedish Flower Hens.

After learning all this, I contacted Justin for the second time and called him out on it. He finally admitted that they were Rhode Island Reds. He claimed my order got messed up from a computer system error and that I instead received 9 RIRs and 11 SFHs. Well that was not correct either. He forgot to explain why there are 11 RIRs, 2 BLRWs, and 1 BB chick as well. When I sent him photos clearly showing BLRWs, he admitted that they definitely were BLRWs. He did not comment on the blue Bresse chick. Not only did he reassure me the first time I asked (and sent photos) that there was no mistake, but the packing label on my box also says 21 Swedish Flower Hens. I do not believe this was an accident. I believe he did not have 20 Swedish Flower Hens to fulfill my order, so instead sent what he had on hand. My order had been delayed one month and he also told me in March that they had poor hatch rates at that time due to weather. I have since be made aware that I'm not the only one who has had this same issue from other customers of Bresse Farms.

Bresse Farms has refunded me $120 of the $259.80 I paid them, as of now. Only 6 are the breed I ordered and 2 of those have vaulted skulls (culls). So I should get back at least $140 for the 14 I did not receive. Justin said he would send the remaining $20, but as of now has not. To say I'm disappointed in my experience with Bresse Farms is an understatement. I'm now left to care for and find homes for almost my entire order, along with being out $140!

I wish I would have found your post before we ordered this spring. We had the same experience. We were supposed to get

45 Bresse
35 Surprise
12 Leghorn

We were short 11 birds I believe when they came in. I called and he said something got missed and he'd send them right out. We got the second bath a couple weeks later. Things happen, no biggie.
The birds were the unhealthiest birds we've ever bought from any hatchery or individual. and we had less than half of them make it! The real kicker is that I paid $10 a bird for Bresse and didn't get them. We wanted them for a breeding program and they were genetics. We had many of them with beak and leg issues. We were sent no more than 20 Bresse IF THAT 0 Leghorns and almost all ameraucana.
I would NEVER order from them again after reading this post I will be telling everyone I know that they are a sleazy company. We made a $500+ order and I'm so sad. I chalked it up to a mistake and I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

 

[FlatlandRaptors]

Yes I bought a dozen Cream Crested Legbar hatching eggs from him and he sent 11 but charged me for a dozen. 6 of those eggs were pullet eggs and only 3 of the 11 were even fertile. I got one to hatch.
I told him I wasn't happy with any of those things, and he did offer to send me chicks if I didn't get any to hatch. I'm done with that company.

Oh no… I just placed an order last night for Black Copper Marans eggs…

 

[littlecoopnextdoor]

I don't live anywhere near this place but I just read through this whole thread and I see some major issues.
1- this sounds like there is a major animal welfare problem and unfit housing. Is there not a farm standard in that state for selling or breeding animals?
2- it sounds like might be fraud since the orders are often messed up with incomplete refunds. I would reach out to PayPal and complain.
3- what a terrible business owner. If he screwed up so bad he should absolutely be refunding you AND sending out new eggs. Yikes. So many red flags on this place.