Best Online Hatcheries...

[bluegrasslady]

I have ordered from murray mcmurray the last couple times. Their birds are decent but as bluecoondawg talked about they ship on Fridays so they sit a little longer than optimal. Unfortunately it led to heavy losses, which they then replaced. Seems like my replacement order always does lots better than my original. In light of this I'm going to try cackle this year because they are considerably closer so in theory the chicks transit will be faster.

 

[blucoondawg]

We put in another order for chicks from Mcmurray scheduled to arrive in early May, the wife wanted to get a few more different breeds of hens so I filled in the rest of the order with NH roosters for butchering, I may replace my current rooster with one of the new ones if one of them turns out to be a nice rooster, this time I am going to call them before the ship and express my displeasure at their Friday shipping practices and see if it does any good. I am also going to tell them I want my free mystery chick to be a cold weather breed as last time I got a Sicilian Buttercup which is Mediterranean warm climate breed, though he seems to be doing ok in the extreme cold we have had this year.

I believe late April to mid may is the ideal time to order chicks, it is generally warm enough to avoid any freezing conditions and cool enough to not have any sweltering hot weather while the birds are in transit, I believe this is why I didn't have any casualties even with the extended shipping over the weekend.