Meyers, tracking and blizzard, oh my!

[rooboo]

Thank you Rob.  Your egg basket is awesome!  Im excited for the cream legbar and happy that at least I know Ill get one for sure hen!  He said his Marans are Little Peddler and his Cream Legbar are Rees or something like that.  I think that might be the line he breeds from or something.  Are you familiar with either of those terms.  Im a total newbie and I will ask him tomorrow when I get there but I'd rather have some insight before I go.  They arent cheap and I like to be an educated consumer.  I'm only purchases for my own pleasure/hobby so I really just want pretty and healthy chicks.  Not planning on breeding or anything.  Thanks for your help

Yes, I am familiar with those lines. The cream legbars are autosexing, which means that you can tell which chicks are boys or girls at day old. I believe that greenfire farms originally imported the only cream legbars years ago, and then just a few years ago they imported the Rees line from Jill Rees because they were winning the major shows in Europe. I have some of the early imports and the Rees line. I personally like the earlier imports a little better because they mostly laid all blue eggs and the Rees line lays different shades of blue and green. The Rees line is supposed to be closer to the breed standard. They are working on a standard for the US, but it's not completed yet. Either way, both lines seem to be very friendly towards people, which you will like. As far as the marans go, the little peddlers line is supposed to be high quality, although I personally have not owned any that were not crossed with something else, like Bev Davis. I had some that were Bev Davis and something else originally, but after I got the marans from greenfire, I loved the egg size, shape, and color of them much better. I am interested in getting some little peddlers, but just haven't as of yet. Here's a picture of some cream legbar chicks. The one's with the clearly defined dark chipmunk stripes are females and the ones with the white spots on the back of the heads are cockerels. The one other thing that I noticed was that the Rees birds seemed to have a few chicks that the autosexing was not so clear cut. I hope this helps.
Rob

 

[Merrymouse]

@rooboo Yes that really helps, thank you. I'm not looking for perfect or anything but at least i now know it will at least resemble the breed standard. I'm involved a bit in showing dogs so I do like to support people who are trying to improve or at least try to keep within the standard even if it means paying a little more.

Now if my husband comes with me to get the chicks I just might have to find a way to hand off the money without him actually knowing how much Im paying

Just joking, its not all that much more than the hatchery but it is more. Now I just have to get lucky and get hens...no matter how you look at it, its a 50/50 chance right? Im really excited for the cream legbar and actually the ones for the hatchery were more expensive and I originally had a swedish flower on the chicks that I lost so happy to find them too. The marans are something I didnt really consider before so dont know to much about them and of course I had a barred rock on my list so happy to get one of those too. Well, we'll see what tomorrow brings but I hope I have at least a few chicks to obsess over tomorrow. Thanks again and I appreciate your help.

 

[rooboo]

@rooboo
 Yes that really helps, thank you.  I'm not looking for perfect or anything but at least i now know it will at least resemble the breed standard.  I'm involved a bit in showing dogs so I do like to support people who are trying to improve or at least try to keep within the standard even if it means paying a little more.   Now if my husband comes with me to get the chicks I just might have to find a way to hand off the money without him actually knowing how much Im paying   Just joking, its not all that much more than the hatchery but it is more.  Now I just have to get lucky and get hens...no matter how you look at it, its a 50/50 chance right?  Im really excited for the cream legbar and actually the ones for the hatchery were more expensive and I originally had a swedish flower on the chicks that I lost so happy to find them too.  The marans are something I didnt really consider before so dont know to much about them and of course I had a barred rock on my list so happy to get one of those too.  Well, we'll see what tomorrow brings but I hope I have at least a few chicks to obsess over tomorrow.  Thanks again and I appreciate your help.

I don't know if you are allowed to have roosters where you live, but if you can, it's not a bad idea to have one or two around. If you plan on letting them roam your yard, the roosters are what you need for hawk lookouts. Mine got to be better lookouts as they got to be a couple years old. When you pick up your legbars, there should be no question about the sex of them. The breeder should be 100% sure whether the chicks are boys or girls. I recently got some 55 flowery hens which look a lot like the Swedish flower hens except that the 55's are also autosexing, if you go back to post 18 in this thread, there's a picture I posted. There are 12 females and 5 males in that group. I'm looking forward to this fall when they're grown up and I'll be able to hatch some of those to sell, knowing the sex at hatch. I have several breeds from greenfire farms here. If you haven't, you should check out all the different rare breeds that they have. You'll be able to see the similarities between the Swedish flower hens and the 55's. I have both of those breeds here now. If you like what you see there, I'll tell you how you can get some of those breeds at a much lower price than what's on their site. Go to greenfirefarms.com to see what they have.
Rob

 

[norwichterrier]

In January, I ordered 18 chicks from Meyer Hatchery. As most of you are aware, hatcheries give you a window of several days of when the chicks will be shipped. On Monday, March 13, 2017 I receive an email that the chicks had shipped. This was the beginning of the blizzard named Stella. I was astonished that Meyer would ship chicks during a blizzard which was exhaustively covered on the news and predicated more than a week out. I only received notification AFTER the chicks shipped.
Meyer is in Ohio and received plenty of forewarning regarding the storm that surged up the Eastern Coast. Needless to say, the chicks all arrived dead on Friday March 17th (priority mail). I had called the post office on Wednesday and stopped in on Thursday to talk to the post mistress just to make sure they were aware of the order. They are very familiar with me since I have ordered hundreds of chicks over the past 15 years.
Aside from the inhumane way these chicks were treated which is in itself an indictment against the way Meyer treats living animals, the way this was handled after the fact was beyond belief.
I wrote an email immediately upon receiving the dead chicks and not only outlined in detail the delivery issues but also included several pictures of the chicks, the box etc. I received a form email back which stated weather conditions cannot be predicted (ridiculous and false statement since this blizzard was covered extensively for more than a week prior) and they needed details about the how the box was received which, had they bothered to read the email and look at the pictures, they could have seen themselves.
I then called Meyer and they attempted to blame me for the shipping date because in January I had selected a week in mid-March to receive the chicks. They were completely unapologetic and refused to take any responsibility for the death of the chicks at all. They then said they were unable to fill a reorder for at least 6 weeks. Since I run a business and schedule these chicks out to anticipate egg laying at a certain time I was not going to be able to meet orders from my customers. Meyer could not have been less sympathetic or offer any solutions. The only thing they were willing to do is replace the money I had spent on the order. Never mind about my time trying to manage this and having to spend hours on the computer/phone trying and fix their mistake.
I find this customer service abhorrent and want this story to be a warning to others.

 

[norwichterrier]

In January, I ordered 18 chicks from Meyer Hatchery. As most of you are aware, hatcheries give you a window of several days of when the chicks will be shipped. On Monday, March 13, 2017 I receive an email that the chicks had shipped. This was the beginning of the blizzard named Stella. I was astonished that Meyer would ship chicks during a blizzard which was exhaustively covered on the news and predicated more than a week out. I only received notification AFTER the chicks shipped.
Meyer is in Ohio and received plenty of forewarning regarding the storm that surged up the Eastern Coast. Needless to say, the chicks all arrived dead on Friday March 17th (priority mail). I had called the post office on Wednesday and stopped in on Thursday to talk to the post mistress just to make sure they were aware of the order. They are very familiar with me since I have ordered hundreds of chicks over the past 15 years.
Aside from the inhumane way these chicks were treated which is in itself an indictment against the way Meyer treats living animals, the way this was handled after the fact was beyond belief.
I wrote an email immediately upon receiving the dead chicks and not only outlined in detail the delivery issues but also included several pictures of the chicks, the box etc. I received a form email back which stated weather conditions cannot be predicted (ridiculous and false statement since this blizzard was covered extensively for more than a week prior) and they needed details about the how the box was received which, had they bothered to read the email and look at the pictures, they could have seen themselves.
I then called Meyer and they attempted to blame me for the shipping date because in January I had selected a week in mid-March to receive the chicks. They were completely unapologetic and refused to take any responsibility for the death of the chicks at all. They then said they were unable to fill a reorder for at least 6 weeks. Since I run a business and schedule these chicks out to anticipate egg laying at a certain time I was not going to be able to meet orders from my customers. Meyer could not have been less sympathetic or offer any solutions. The only thing they were willing to do is replace the money I had spent on the order. Never mind about my time trying to manage this and having to spend hours on the computer/phone trying and fix their mistake.
I find this customer service abhorrent and want this story to be a warning to others.

 

[Merrymouse]

@norwichterrier Im sorry you had a bad experience too. While I agree Meyer should have known better than to ship the chicks in the middle of a blizzard (I too called last Friday to maybe delay my order) there were plenty of people who did get their chicks. Also what would they do with the chicks, I dont think they can just hold on to them until the weather clears. I think it was more a combination of things that went wrong, including USPS mishandling and horrible winter storm. Im sorry too that they were not nice one the phone. The lady I spoke to was nice and even apologized and said she was so sorry to hear my chicks didnt make it. She too gave me the option to reorder or get my money back I really cant think of anything else they could've done but there is never a reason for rudeness.. I just got my money back and did not reorder. Mostly because I had already lost 3 days pay waiting for chicks and for that amount of financial loss I could have gotten the fanciest chickens ever! I also could not go through emotionally waiting days on end for chicks and I especially did not want to be responsible for more chicks dying because of the cold weather. I understand your frustration. Sorry you had to go through this.

 

[Merrymouse]

Yay! I went to the breeder this morning and my chicks are here! Only 4 for now, hoping to add some orpingtons and maybe wyandotte later in the weekend or early next week. Oh in in the video I called my maran cooper instead of copper

Don't mind me, I was excited. So far the swedish flower is the feistiest. The maran the biggest. They ate immediately and explored around. They are now under MHP napping. I tried to show them how to use the nipple waterer but they didnt really do it. Should I put a regular waterer in there? Heres a quick video. Also I could not get a good picture of the maran. The white paper towels against the black bird were causing glare. I hope I have hens but I guess its 50/50.

I know i have a hen for the legbar but the others were a crap shoot. I thought we could be pretty certain with the barred rock but she said that these are not production barred rock but heritage and you can't really go by the head spot with heritage so we'll see. But for now I already really love them

My husband is already smitten too, just as I predicted. Here you go:

 

[fangedknight]

Yaaaaayy! Babies! They're so cute!!

 

[SueT]

Merrymouse, re the nipple waterer, I don't have experience w these, but it's important for the chicks to drink a lot since the food is dry. I would add another water source just in case. They may be already accustomed to drinking from a regular waterer. Anyone want to chime in on this?

 

[song of joy]

Merrymouse, re the nipple waterer, I don't have experience w these, but it's important for the chicks to drink a lot since the food is dry. I would add another water source just in case. They may be already accustomed to drinking from a regular waterer. Anyone want to chime in on this?

Good advice. Put in a regular waterer until they all get the hang of the nipple water system.