Mt Healthy Hatcheries

[brahmamamamak]

I am a newbe and ordered my light brahmas from Mt Healthy Hatcheries for a 4/28/10 hatch and shipment date. The customer service people were always very nice and helpful. But yesterday was one of those days were if it could go wrong it did.

We notified the Post Office that the chicks were on their way, gave them our phone number and called them after the second mail truck came to verify that they did not receive the chicks. So we all figured that we would receive them first thing this morning.

We had high winds here in eastern connecticut and we lost power....we had a tree fall on the power lines on our road and take them down also closing our road. No power, no phones and a brooder going cold.

About 5:30 PM we get a knock on the door, a frantic PO employee was at the door holding my box of peepers, apparently they arrived on a later truck, she had tried to call us for an hour and 45 minutes, had moved the barriers and cones, drove under the electric wire and hanging tree to deliver the babies!! Believe me I own my own Salon and Day Spa and she will be rewarded with a gift certificate for a massage!

Now we were frantic to get the generator going and get the brooder warmed up again.... We didn't get much sleep last night but everyone seems to be fine..we ordered 18 and received 19.. All so cute and growing before our eyes!

 

[ADozenGirlz]

Hey Eastern CT!. Suffield, CT here, welcome!!

I'm totally feeling your pain! Check out my thread about MY drama last night with my hatching eggs that were due to hatch TODAY! I would have given my eye teeth for a generator at my house last night!! Congratulations on your new babies!!!!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=323669&p=5

 

[chick4chicks]

Congrats on the new arrivals. Sending best wishes your way for the poor little buggers with their hard start. Glad they are doing good.

 

[brahmamamamak]

The main reason why I wrote under the topic of breeders and hatcheries, is because I didn't find much written about Mt Healthy Hatcheries nor did I see any photos posted of any chickens purchased from them. And would have loved to seen some. ( I am sorry that I digressed on my post. It's amazing how drama will side track you.) The feed store I go to said they get 4000 chicks a year from Mt Healthy and have never had any real problem with chick health or loss. I will try to post pictures of my Light Brahmas as they grow. This picture is from today they are about 4 days old.

 

[HerbiLady]

I couldn't find much on Mt Healthy myself and I ordered from them this year so I'll add my 2 cents worth to yours

I ordered 7 each of SS, BR and BO, 5 SLW and 4 LB. Straight run. I had to wait a bit longer than I'd planned for shipping (April 21st...about a month after I paid) but they shipped on the day they told me and they shipped everything I ordered without substituting anything. They didn't include any extra chicks. I didn't find them to be expensive, even with the vaccination.

Out of the box, all the little birds were good ...I had to help one smallish SS learn to drink but it did fine. One of the LB has a vent issue...there was like a flap/finger over the top of its vent and it had pasty butt for the first week but is fine. The finger looking flap thing is still there but the bird is healthy and doing very well without anymore pasting. I just worry that the other birds will be interested in it but so far so good. If it starts to look at all red I shoot it with some blue-kote. I had a few pasty butts out of the 30 chicks but nothing I think really bad or unusual.

I lost one chick last week but that had to do with brooder/heat issues. My fault

Overall, I was really happy. I ordered from them because I'm in Michigan and they're in Ohio and I wanted the shortest shipping time. They arrived at my PO the next morning and I went and got them at 7:00 a.m.

What I didn't like was that although they were awesome in customer service BEFORE I ordered and gave them my money, they weren't so much after I ordered and they had my money. They answered my questions via email and phone promptly but they were a bit short and not nearly as cool with me as they were at first. I'm sure it's really busy and they are pretty harried with annoying people waiting for chicks so I kind of understand that. They didn't offer any kind of tracking number for the chicks which bothered me and were kind of cagey when I asked them about Priority Mail, which is what I think they used. But maybe that's just normal with their standard ship plan and it's too much of a logistical nightmare to keep track of tracking numbers?

Overall, I give them an 8 out of 10 possible points

 

[HerbiLady]

Ooops...photos!

Here are a couple of the SLW at 10 days old:

And some crappy camera phone photos of the chicks at a couple days old (obivously I have much to learn about photographing chicks!)

The green goo in the last photo is Gro-Gel

Which, in case anyone is interested, they preferred to eat out of a dish. More competition that way I guess!

 

[cybercat]

All my chickens came from MH. We get ours ordered from local feed store that has only used them for 20 years. I have pics from day 1 last year on their blog link in my sig. I have more comming in 5 days. Word out is that some top breeders recomend them for better quality chickens. I have to say from what I have seen from other hatcheries on my breed they MH are very good quality. Some meet SOP some do not but all are workable to be SOP with right breeding. Patterns are true and the probelms one I have are high tail set and a couple light bodies. My rooster is great perfect in body and temperment. I did have a choise to order from another this year to replace those I lost to hawks. I chose not too at this time due to quality.

 

[Alabama ee]

We ordered from 16 EE's (one little roo and 15 pullets) from Mt Healthy back in Feb. We are in Al. They sent them express and we received them the day after they were sent. They put in a couple extras. The chicks just about hopped out of the box when we opened it. They were all healthy and doing well. I will order from them again in the future.

 

[Napalongtail]

And here's the link to Mt. Healthy if anyone else is interested in contacting them. http://www.mthealthy.com/

 

[jodief100]

I buy lots of chicks from Mt Healthy, mainly because they are 10 miles away and I pick them up. Never had any problems, never lost a single one until this year. Always get nice, healthy birds.