All hatcheries are not the same. All of us do not have the same goals. Some breeders do a great job breeding to the SOP and some don't. You cannot lump them or us together and say we or they are all the same.
If you are into show quality birds, you need to get a copy of the SOP and do a lot of research of the breeders to make sure they are breeding to your goals before you buy your stock. How good the breeder is makes a difference too. I'll use Welsummers as an example. Some breeders are breeding for a show quality grand champion. They could care less how dark the eggs are. Some are breeding for the show quality aand the dark eggs. Some are breeding for show quality, dark eggs, and good egg production. Some are breeding for dark eggs and good egg production, nit show quality. So if you buy from a bereeder that is not very good or that is breeding for something other than your goals, you could be disappointed.
Some hatcheries do breed to the SOP, but they pen breed. Instead of carefully selecting which one or two hens go with a specific rooster, they put maybe 200 hens and 20 roosters in one pen and have no control over which specific rooster breeds which specific hen. You are not going to control the final product as well doing that.
Not every chicken that the very best breeders hatch is show quality. The good breeders have a very vigorous culling program and get rid of a whole lot of chickens that do not meet standards. If you get eggs of chicks from the very best breeders, you will get many that will not take the grand prize. Many of them have flaws. There were some comments as to how cruel the hatcheries are. What do you think a lot of the breeders do with their culls? What conditions do they keep their breeding pairs in? Not all breeders, but some. As I said, they are not all the same.
Some hatcheries may say or imply that they produce show quality birds. I consider them dishonest. Some come out and say that they do not produce show quality birds. Many are pretty quiet on this subject. Ill include a post from Teri with Ideal Poultry in another thread, below in italics. You will note that she talks about Ideal and what they do. She does not talk about what other hatcheries do. She is not a spokesman for hatcheries. She is a spokesman for Ideal. The link to the thread is at the bottom.
As Teri from Ideal says, their product is marketed and priced for the backyard flock. Their price does not reflect show quality chickens. You would think anyone that is familiar with show quality chickens would understand that.
Fred, to get to your question. Can you get mutts from hatcheries. Of course you can. But also, can you get mutts from breeders? Of course you can. It depends on the hatchery or the breeder.
Hello all, This is Teri from Ideal. It was said earlier that we were not commenting for 'obvious' reasons. That is not the case. We do come on the board about once a week and see what is going on. We do not have an employee that constantly 'monitors' the board.
The video was of the hatchery operation itself because that is what Purina wanted for their television show. We have not done anything on location at the farm but will look into it. Back when I was in school at A&M, I did some very unprofessional videos of the farm and most people found it really boring.
I am going to try my best to address the topics brought up in this thread. If I miss something, you are welcome to send a follow up message. I will subscribe to this topic so I will see your responses and be able to reply to them.
Ideal Poultry has a very large breeding farm about 8 miles out of Cameron in Pettibone, TX. We have approximately 60,000 chickens, bantams, ducks, geese and guineas on the farm. There is a picture of the farm shown briefly in the video, as well as a photo of the farm in the about us section on our website .
We have our own breeders for all of the poultry we sell other than the following: all turkeys, french guineas, chukar and pheasant.
We have not purchased breeders from an outside source since 1999. 1999 is when we ventured into the 'rare' side of the poultry business. Since that time, each summer we start a new breeding flock by selecting our breeders based on the Standard of Perfection. In the late 90's when we were building our rare flock, Mr. Fuchs did go all over the country to try to buy the best of the best. He ordered breeding stock that was 'show quality, high dollar' stock. Even by purchasing the offspring of show champion poultry, many chicks we received were what you all would call, hatchery quality. It takes a lot of culling once the birds mature to even get close to the Standard. All three Mr. Fuchs' that are involved in the selection process hold a Poultry Science degree from Texas A & M, with the elder Mr. Fuchs holding a Master degree in genetics.
There are times when we are sold out of a breed, that we might have an order drop shipped from another hatchery. However, it is a hatchery that has quality poultry and in most cases it is a hatchery that we sold breeding stock to.
Our breeding stock is mated on an average of one male per ten hens.
We do not claim to have nor advertise to have 'show quality' poultry. In fact we very clearly state otherwise in our literature.
Anyone that is involved in showing poultry would know that our prices are not indicative of show quality poultry.
The purpose hatcheries serve is to provide good quality poultry at a reasonable price, to the average farmer that wants to enjoy the beauty of the poultry or have farm fresh eggs. We do our best to provide quality poultry to all of our customers as well as provide excellent customer service. It would not be in our best interest to do otherwise. We have been in business since 1937 and will celebrate our 75th anniversary next year. We have not survived this long by providing an inferior product.
Like another post said it's about knowing what you want for both the buyer and seller. Our primary customer is the backyard farmer. That is who our product is priced for and marketed for.
Please respond with any other questions you might have and I will do my best to answer them.
Teri Fuchs Adcox
V-P Ideal Poultryhttps://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=450193&p=4
