DC Heritage Poultry - has anyone used this breeder?

[Madvalleychick]

Wish we'd seen this thread prior to buying 40 day old chicks from DC Heritage Poultry in Quebec. Its less than two weeks since we brought them home and we lose a bird every two days. Swollen eyes, heavy breathing, nasal bubbles/ discharge, staggering, head down, lay down, dead. We knew nothing about MG (mentioned above) but after reading posts here and looking up the disease online it sure looks like it. When I complained about the chicks condition the company said it was the four hour drive home that did them in..... One of the birds in the group already had symptoms when I picked them up and they said it was a vitamin B deficiency and to give the bird two drops of adult multivitamins. We did that and we still lose birds including that one. So far DC Poultry isn't answering our requests for compensation and I expect after being convicted of running one of the largest puppy mills around (they were known as Paws R Us https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/hundreds-of-dogs-seized-from-quebec-kennel-1.698807) we won't see any relief from this company. I suggest you look elsewhere rather than get birds from these people; they may have swapped dogs for birds for their income. After seeing the operation I actually was thinking 'puppy mill' based on the conditions there and now this! We may have to cull the whole flock and start over but I really hope we don't have to go to that extreme - apparently they are carriers for life if they survive. Very disappointing to say the least.

How did your birds survive? Unfortunately did t see this thread and now have 6 chickens from them and three already have respiratory symptoms and closed eyes. They are 12 weeks old and I’m hoping they can survive this. But we may have to cull them in the fall and start again.

 

[Erin80]

Wow this is crazy. I literally just emailed them about ordering hatching eggs....I just wanted to know how much shipping would be. Soooooo glad I saw this before I went any further!!

 

[Ali_Howard]

How did your birds survive? Unfortunately did t see this thread and now have 6 chickens from them and three already have respiratory symptoms and closed eyes. They are 12 weeks old and I’m hoping they can survive this. But we may have to cull them in the fall and start again.

Can you please give me an update on this? Thanks.

 

[Madvalleychick]

Yes. It was a rough start, but they all survived. Five are now thriving - 4 Wyandottes and a Brahma. One Wyandottes turned out to be a Roo, which in the end was a good thing. He takes great care of the girls. They have laid eggs all winter and are beautiful. One of the chickens had a beak problem - she was bullied by the others so badly we had to cull her. ...and I don’t know what the respiratory illness was that they had. It hasn’t returned yet. I’ve considered that it was the young pullets breathing in flecks of dusty wood shavings and the cool exposure to the spring that could have been a cause too... but who knows. I’m glad I didnt cull - but I won’t be ever selling or sharing chickens just in case it’s now something dormant in them. I don’t know how to advise... I love the birds, but they did get sick.

 

[Ali_Howard]

Thanks, we requested eggs instead. She seems to be very responsive, and people who took eggs were more happy with what became of their birds. A good early start seems to be what is good for both people and chickens.

 

[Chick_Maelle]

Thanks, we requested eggs instead. She seems to be very responsive, and people who took eggs were more happy with what became of their birds. A good early start seems to be what is good for both people and chickens.

I think mycoplasma can actually transmit through the egg as well!

 

[alphabetatango]

DO NOT USE DC Heritage Poultry in Clarendon Quebec.

Came home this Spring 2021 with sick chicks, and spread MG/Mycoplasma throughout my flock. Had to cull everyone. Don't be fooled by Danielle's prompt correspondence and efficient communication style. BEWARE. The only positive I can offer is that with polite persistence she did refund me for the chicks I purchased from her, not for the cost of all the other chicks that were infected due to her irresponsible and inhumane practices.

 

[bstrauss1994]

Buyer beware with DC heritage poultry. This is my first year raising a laying flock and I thought it would be so fun to have a colourful egg basket and decided to look into heritage birds. I didn't want chicks shipped in the mail as i've always heard horror stories and also didn't want to drive a long distance to pick them up. I was happy when I discovered DC heritage poultry, they were only 45 minutes from my home and had a large selection of heritage birds to chose from at good prices. It never crossed my mind to check reviews or do some digging into this company, their website looked good and they were very professional when communicating my email. I placed an order for spring of this year 2021 and put down a deposit. When it came time to go pick up the chicks I paid the rest of my invoice as instructed and we communicated a little by email as some of the breeds I had requested didn't have full hatch rates and they suggested either refunding me or giving me a different breed of chick that had better hatch rates. I chose to take more lavender orpington birds rather than take a refund. When I arrived to pick them up I had a bad feeling as there wasn't much to the property, it just seemed like a run down old farm and not like a five star breeding facility like they claimed on their website. I picked up the chicks and went home, I thought everything was going well as I hadn't lost a single chick during the brooding process when they are their most fragile. A month and a half in I lost a girl, she seemed like she had hurt a leg and I assumed one of the other chicks had steeped on her in some way. I put her in isolation to rest up as everything else about her seemed fine, she was dead in the morning. A few weeks later the same thing happened and a few weeks after that another dead chick that seemed fine one day and the next was quite weak and died fairly quickly with no other signs of illness. My first thought was that with the weakness and leg issues was that for some reason the chickens had a riboflavin deficiency so I gave them all some beef liver to get their vitamins in as I'd read Joel Salatin had done once.

Then our only black copper maran from the bunch started to seem ill, she had her tail down and wouldn't run around the yard like her usual self poking around for bugs and scratching in the dirt. Again she seemed weak like the others and we were keeping a close eye on her, she also started to breathe with a gapping beak which we were very concerned about. The others hadn't done this. We started researching diseases and ways we could doctor our sick bird. I had a gut feeling something wasn't right and emailed the breeder to ask if they could have possibly sent me home with sick birds as I had never had issues like this in the past with my previous flock of egg layers given to me by a neighbour or any of our batches of meat birds. Danielle found a reason to blame me as I had possibly switched them from starter to lay ration too soon and I blamed myself for their deaths. The sick black copper maran was found one afternoon sitting under the ramp into the coop barely able to move, I got her out and again put a chicken into isolation. I tried adding nutri drench to her water to get extra vitamins into her to hopefully give her a boost and called started looking for a vet to help. The only vet in our area was too busy to come and she finally died as well. This was in September and we've had two more die since then. I finally had the thought to look for reviews of the breeder DC heritage poultry and found this thread, it gives me relief knowing its not something we did on our farm to make these chickens sick but is also shocking knowing this company has so little remorse for the problems they've inflicted on chicken keepers who only want the best for their flocks. A company that was once canada's largest puppy mill suddenly doesn't become reputable and start a chicken breeding program that sells high quality chicks\chickens.

I am going to contact Danielle and see about getting a refund as of the 20 chicks I originally purchased I have 6 remaining and i'm not even sure they'll make it considering everything. We've even tried a round of antibiotics used to treat respiratory disease in chickens and have still had more die. At this point I don't know what else to do to save them.

 

[Tori1133]

Omg I am just finding this thread now… and I’m so sad! DC heritage poultry is only an hour drive from me and I kept thinking how lucky I was that the seemingly biggest rare/heritage chicken breeder in Canada was so close. This thread is making me worry to order my second batch of eggs from them this spring though because I really don’t want to support bad treatment of animals.

I will share my experience though as it has actually been largely positive compared to everyone else’s here, I guess I’ll play devils advocate.

We got 8 hatching eggs last spring and 6 hatched (which I thought was a good number?) I have had zero issues and have 6 wonderful healthy birds with the exception of one hen who has a crooked toe but it otherwise healthy and we love her, her name is Knuckle lol. I am new to chickens so it’s hard to say if they are up to breed standards but they look beautiful to me either way and I have been really happy with them all and no illnesses like everyone else seems to have experienced.

That being said, I just made a post recently in the emergencies section about a 2month old pullet of ours that recently died suddenly. We had gotten two more day old chicks from DC heritage this fall as we loved our chickens from them so much. These two chicks seemed fine and healthy up until a few days ago when one just dropped dead for no apparent reason I found her in the coop on the floor in the morning not roosting with her sister, I picked her up and she was alive but non responsive so I brought her in and we tried to figure out how to help her but she died within a couple of hours. Her sibling seems totally fine still…

So I don’t know, personally I thought it was just a fluke and didn’t cross my mind to blame the breeder and just thought “such is life” kinda thing. But I wonder if there’s a chance that all my other birds are only healthy because I hatched them myself and they didn’t get sick at the breeder? I’m not sure.

Also, I’m so so so sad to hear about the puppy mill… that definitely does not instill confidence in their ability to care for animals I do believe people can change but this doesn’t seem that likely if they jumped right back into large scale animal breeding and chose an animal that has way lower ethical standards than dogs.

But again, devils advocate lol, Im wondering if there is ANY chance it is not the same people though?! Maybe I am just in denial lol
But I’m confused because the puppy mill lady has a different name (Nicole) than who I have been dealing with (Danielle) and also looks quite different to me… I have been to the farm twice now and met Danielle who seemed very nice but obviously that doesn’t mean that she isn’t hiding anything. But yeah, she really didn’t look like the picture in the article to me, granted that picture is 10yrs old so maybe I didn’t recognize her.

Can anyone here confirm that it’s the same people running the place? Also has anyone here seen the conditions the chickens live in? While I was there I didn’t see any of their chickens so I can’t speak to that but would love to know.

Sigh… I really wanted these guys to be good

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

Thank you everyone for sharing this info. I had just put an order today but will call and cancel. What a shame.

Can anyone suggest an alternative? Is performance poultry any good? Other suggestions appreciated.

Might I suggest Sandhill preservattion center? They are a very well respected person in the poultry community. Though not evybody likes Glenn.