I can't say that I'm very happy with MPC. I ordered 7 day old female chicks from the company in the fall of 2017, two of which were their proprietary breeds (super blue egger-$30, blue favaucana-$28) that were super expensive, but we were only planning on a small flock, so I was okay spending a little extra money to get what I really wanted. I also ordered a barred rock, a black copper maran, an easter egger, a golden laced wyandotte, and an australorp, each $3-4. Oh, and shipping was $45!!! They were shipped on the date I had chosen and arrived at the post office two days later. Initially everyone looked happy and healthy. All were active- eating, drinking, pooping, etc. However, the next day, the "super blue egger" was starting to act lethargic. I picked her up to examine her, only to realize that she had 5 toes, which was not characteristic of the breed. I couldn't find anything obviously wrong with her, so i called mpc to alert them of the sick chick and that she was the wrong breed. The next morning she died, so it was still within their 48 hour refund window. While customer service was very nice, they kinda gave me the run around with the refund. First I had to send pictures of the dead chick...then they wanted pictures of each individual chick to "help me find which one was the super blue egger," which doesn't sound that bad, but every other chick I ordered was a brown or black chick. The super blue egger was the ONLY yellow chick in the bunch. They tried to tell me that this was a splash favaucana (which it wasn't- I had a blue chick that was obviously the favaucana), then maybe a salmon faverolle, which I hadn't ordered. I didn't really care what it was, I just wanted my refund. After 2-3 days of hassle, customer service finally issued my refund.
Ok, drama over...so I thought. The remaining six chicks were happy, healthy, and grew like crazy. My daughter's favorite quickly became the Australorp chick, who was very friendly and always willing to be handled. The golden laced wyandotte was SUPER skittish, but the others were reasonably friendly. All was good until the chicks were about 14-15 wks old, when I started hearing strange sounds from the coop...within a few days it was obvious that I was hearing someone's first attempts at crowing. Fantastic. Now I just had to figure out which chicken it was. Any guesses as to which chick it was? Yes, it was the very friendly Australorp...my daughter's favorite...AND the wyandotte. That's right...2 roosters out of 6 "hens" ordered. So much for MPC's 95% accuracy that they claim to achieve (67% is what I received)! So we didn't want roosters, but I was going to give them a chance. However, our Australorp went from a friendly chick to a MEAN rooster practically overnight. He would peck/bite any time I got near the food or the other girls. I had to wear gloves/long sleeves to prevent him from drawing blood. He crowed ALL THE TIME. The last straw was when, totally unprovoked, he attacked my daughter when she walked into the chicken pasture. Into the stock pot he went after that. The wyandotte has been much better behaved so far. MPC issued a refund for the 2 roosters ($8.15), but no credit given for shipping. All in all, I spent $132 for 7 chicks, including shipping. I was refunded a total of $36.65 for the dead chick and roosters, resulting in a final cost of $95 for 4 hens...yes...crazy, huh? Maybe one will end up laying golden eggs? Since we needed more eggs than the 4 hens will provide, I had to buy more chicks this spring from the local feed store... 2 ameraucanas and 2 welsummers...for the grand total of $14.
Believe it or not, I still wasn't all that put out with the company. I mean, mistakes happen, right? I had even considered ordering more chicks from them before I found the ones at the feed store. However, the final straw was when I left a review of the australorp on their website, which was somewhat negative, but they never posted it. Nothing bothers me more than a company that filters "product" reviews. It makes any reviews on their website useless. So, if you are considering ordering from MPC, just realize that they do not post all reviews, so you can't really trust the reviews for accuracy, shipping is terribly expensive and not refunded, even for their mistakes, and sexing accuracy is questionable.
