I am so sorry for what you're going thru. We have ordered quite a few times from the same hatchery and lost a chick or two each time. This year we ordered 25. It took almost a full 72 hours for the chicks to reach us. No one called to let us know they had arrived at the PO that morning. I knew they must be there so sent my husband to the PO about 10am to ask about them. Sure enough they had arrived and were just sitting there, after I had taken a big sheet of paper to them the previous day with our name and phone number in big red writing! My husband quickly got them into our warm truck and we spent two hours with them at home getting them all warm. Two were already DOA and we have lost 8 more since they arrived on Thursday. I feel your pain. Just tonight I checked on all of them around 4pm and I was feeling we were past the worst part since they had all been running around in the brooder all day being normal chicks. We went out to pick up groceries and gas, not gone for more than 2 hours, and came home to another dead one. I'm not doing anything differently, clean food and water, good heater, room for them to be in a cooler spot if needed, large brooder box. One of my concerns is that my order was supposed to ship in mid-Feb but due to weather in Midwest, they just shipped this week. I'm sure it is a logistical nightmare for the hatcheries because they know how many eggs they are hatching each week on a schedule, and then weather happens and they have to double up on orders shipped the next week. Not sure how they manage to do that.
Anyway, these are my favorite breed and I am just sad at the loss of so many of them. Not sure if it's the parent stock, whatever they do to "push" more hatchlings to fulfill the backorders, 72 hours in shipping with cold conditions, or something I'm doing. My heart is sad.
they looked over packed and trampled and it took too long for them to get here unfortunately. This was my first time ordering chicks from a hatchery and my worst nightmare came true. Iām warming them up to see if there will be any survivors but itās not looking good.
