Well I wanted to get in contact with a local hatchery to buy some baby chicks. Luckly I live in Fresno and there is Belt Hatchery here. I wanted to order 200 baby chicks. I call them up and they told me I have to go to a feed store to buy them. I was thinking now why in the world would I have to do that? Then I politely asked the gal for a feed store name where I can call for prices. I ended up getting a hold of one and asked for prices. Now through the feed store, there was a substantial mark up from the hatchery price list almost double the price for a chick. I felt really mad and bad all at the same time and did not know why the hatchery would put me through all this running around. I can't be able to grasp why would they be taking sales from the feed stores when I never would buy from the feed store anyhow? So after all this number crunching it was cheaper for me to order my chicks from Murray McMurray and pay for shipping and handling than to buy local chicks. What is wrong with that picture? I always thought locally would be more convenient but as it turned out in my case it was a nightmare. So why do hatcheries do this?