best hatchery?

[Spifflove]

I use Metzer; efowl, and hamburgs. Don't expect a great selection until spring. However Metzer has some nice white layers not to be overlooked.

 

[Dasp]

Hello,

There are few sources for starting up a new flock.

Including Incubating eggs, Buying baby chicks, placing eggs under a broody hen etc...

My choice would be incubating eggs since I love the entire process.

At Dasp we have several incubators you can use to incubate your own eggs, But at this time we only have

fertile quail eggs available. All though eBay and many sites offer fertile eggs for hatching which you can have shipped

to your house and they will still hatch as long as the incubation process is carefully cared for.

All my chickens I hatched myself and kind of makes it a closer relationship with my hens..

They also think i'm their mother since I was the first living creature they saw upon hatching.

Best of luck with your new flock!

Regards

 

[daoustaj]

Your local teactor supply or feed store, i got mine from privett. Very affordable and are grwat quality(feed srores often order from them)

 

[Celie]

I personally would recommend MMcM especially because of where you live. Murray McMurray is in Iowa too!

I had a great experience with Murray, I have 40 little peeplings that are all doing great! Customer service is amazing. You will have to wait for spring though(some others are still shipping now)

X2 I do not live in Iowa, but my first chicks came from McMurray's 7 years ago. They have the best quality as far as I have seen.

 

[dirt4life]

Thanks everyone! sorry it took me so long to display.. was rather busy the last few days.
We had some from McMurray at the start of the season.. and to say the least the raccoons got to enjoy them before we got to .
Only thing we are unsure about with McMurray is the prices are a little more even if we plan on getting some shipped to us. We are also looking into getting a large order of ducks too.

Though as of now he is all about Meyer and so am I.. Guess time will tell. I did email McMurray to see if we could pick up our order to save on cost.. though its still about a 3 hour drive to go there.

 

[LaynaDon95]

Thanks everyone! sorry it took me so long to display.. was rather busy the last few days.
We had some from McMurray at the start of the season.. and to say the least the raccoons got to enjoy them before we got to .
Only thing we are unsure about with McMurray is the prices are a little more even if we plan on getting some shipped to us. We are also looking into getting a large order of ducks too.

Though as of now he is all about Meyer and so am I.. Guess time will tell. I did email McMurray to see if we could pick up our order to save on cost.. though its still about a 3 hour drive to go there.

lol Then what you really need to figure is how much gas it would take for a 6 hour drive.

That's why haven't picked up my babies instead of having them shipped, though I would love to at some point. Ideal is 3 hours away from me.

 

[featheredmom]

Well, I will be getting Meyer chicks later this week due to a lack of MMcM availability, I can tell you that the customer service at Meyer is not as good, I can't speak for the quality of the birds yet as they have not arrived, but I can let you know later in the week how they compare as I will have both side by side. I was considering trying Ideal this spring for a couple of jersey giants, but think I will stick with MMcM, they were wonderful with us and I can not speak highly enough about their customer service!! It was unparallelled, and that is hard to find these days.

Meyer screwed up my order, somehow the internet lost it. Then I called and they said it was not their fault and my chicks would be another month...shipping either Thanksgiving week or January(which was too late for our 4H needs and we already have 3wk old babies, they were supposed to arrive a week apart, not 4). Why not the October ship date I had paid for??? Nope. No apologies and they even told me that it was not their fault at one point. I was then promised that they would be shipped the Monday before Thanksgiving to ensure arrival before the post office closed for the holiday(although they claimed that my PO would still be staffed on Thanksgiving so it wouldn't be a problem-yeah, we live in a town of 200, I doubt that). Well, its Tuesday and they still have not shipped. I called again and was told that they may ship tomorrow, they may ship Friday, they have no way of knowing(seriously??? so who DOES know this stuff?)...well, good thing I cancelled my vacation plans for this delivery.

If I did my job like the folks at Meyer, I would've lost it. So far the poor customer service has not made up for the slightly cheaper prices or greater winter availability.

 

[Hillschicks]

I used meyer hatchery myself and didnt have any problems... Chicks arrived healthy and happy the day they said they would when i ordered online(phone internet even) ... Id chalk the origional problem up to stuff happens, but your right poor customer service is inexcusable... If your not a people person, get a different job!!

 

[AlivianAcres]

I ordered some from Meyer Hatchery. Their customer service was great...our first shipment arrived 5 days after shipping (not the fault of the hatchery but the fault of USPS-whats new right?) I immediately contacted them and they set up a new shipment for me right away. I would defiantly order from them again...in fact I plan to order some silver or blue laces soon.

 

[featheredmom]

Well, now instead of October or Thanksgiving week, my chicks have been pushed back yet another week. I was all set up for my chick arrival, checking the post office daily all week and despite all of my chicks showing "available" this week, no chicks. We will see what happens next week, maybe we will get December chicks, maybe not. A big problem in this scenario is that they did not even bother to notify me of the delays, I had to call them-grrrr.