Three weeks: I ordered 8 Silver Sebright chicks from Ideal. They all arrived healthy and perky without extra males for warmth. Ideal put two extra SS chicks in. After looking over my invoice, I noticed that they had not charged me for Marek's vaccine and I confirmed via telephone that it had been missed. I think they have to re-enter your order if you request insurance/no males for warmth, and it was skipped over on my final order. This disappointed me, as I was adding them to an existing flock and Sebrights are supposed to be especially susceptible to Marek's. (Not to mention I've found a robin and a crow mysteriously dead in the yard in the last 24 hours...We've had some nasty thunderstorms with high winds, and the crow may have gotten caught in the run/aviary and been too waterlogged to escape the duck pool, but it still made me nervous with chicks in the house and ducklings due any day.)
I was not expecting very high quality, so I'm still satisfied to have some pretty banties for the yard.
Flaws in the chicks: ALL of the chicks have one or more pink toes on each foot. This may disappear with a bit of age, but I was hoping to be able to mark at least one with all blue feet in case I want to set some eggs and improve my flock in the future. One of the chicks has a cross beak which was barely noticeable from day two, but it's worsening and will need to be culled.
They are in a brooder with 4 Silver Laced Wyandotte chicks that are a week younger and the SLW have just started to look noticeably bigger this week. They are still young, but I'm guessing that they will probably be a bit larger than the SS standard. I have noticed two or three chicks that look to have pretty clean lacing on their juvenile wing feathers. I'll post again a few weeks down the road.
)) got the call chicks heading here next week!
