ordering mail order chicks

[nolakes]

I've done fertile eggs through mail and was a good experience for me and chicks, arrived safe and no cracks. The ones I just ordered for April will be bantams, live, sexed, and my first time doing this. I've seen reviews of DOA and wrong sexed using them and worried. My concern is the bantams I have on order is now listed as sold out. So I'm waiting all these months on chicks sold out then shows up as roosters or DOA than gees what's my chance on tracking that breed back down, 1) being Sultan. Those aren't available everywhere.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

The main problem is people like to complain more than they like saying good things about businesses, there's always someone who doesn't like a place when others still do. I figure it's best to wait and see about your chick order, a lot of those DOA are because people order chicks when the weather isn't good for the area they are shipping to, I personally wait until all cold snaps are behind me, I have ordered multiple times and they are always sexed correctly, if they weren't able to correctly sex bantams they wouldn't be selling them.

 

[MyPetChicken]

Doesn't MPC drop ship via multiple hatcheries all over the country?

I'm sorry you are mis-informed, we do not drop ship from hatcheries all over the country.

To the OP: please clarify if you ordered hatching eggs or live baby chicks. While it's possible to sex live baby chicks at the hatchery, it isn't possible to sex hatching eggs. That might account for why Meyer only offers straight run if they're actually just hatching eggs.

I ordered from MyPetChicken twice this past several months, and Meyer did a horrible job of sexing the chicks, resulting in three unwanted roosters.

By the way, MPC is a middleman that contracts with numerous Amish chicken breeders for hatching eggs, and they rent brooder and hatching space at Meyer Hatchery in Ohio where Meyer incubates the eggs for them. Myer does the sexing of the chicks, and they're the ones who got my orders so messed up. As delightful as MPC customer service is, I won't order from them again due to the sexing problems they dumped on me.

Yes, we can and do sex bantams. We have a 100% sexing guarantee.

I know this tends to be the general rumor but that isn't true. My Pet Chicken and Meyer Hatchery have a partnership which includes shared incubator space and breeding stock. My Pet Chicken has our own proprietary breeds you won't find available through Meyer Hatchery I'm so sorry to hear you received roosters and feel they were "dumped" on you. If you let My Pet Chicken know about the errors then I know that you were refunded 100% for the mistakes. We stand behind our guarantee.


Alex
My Pet Chicken

 

[MyPetChicken]

I've done fertile eggs through mail and was a good experience for me and chicks, arrived safe and no cracks. The ones I just ordered for April will be bantams, live, sexed, and my first time doing this. I've seen reviews of DOA and wrong sexed using them and worried. My concern is the bantams I have on order is now listed as sold out. So I'm waiting all these months on chicks sold out then shows up as roosters or DOA than gees what's my chance on tracking that breed back down, 1) being Sultan. Those aren't available everywhere.

Don't worry, we rarely have problems shipping any of our chicks. If the worst happens and something does go wrong we will do EVERYTHING we can to make it right. We have a "live" availability that updates by the minute and Mondays you can see the excess chicks that hatched for that week. It is rare that we can't fix the accidents that happen occasionally.


Alex
My Pet Chicken

 

[azygous]

Yes, Alex, MPC refunded me fully for all the errors, including two dead chicks. I have no problems with MPC customer service. It was a delight dealing with HQ. But refunds don't cover the stress involved, particularly the legwork needed to find homes for the extra cockerels after raising them for three or four months.

I'm just not willing to trust again whomever does the sexing since the error rate on my two orders was way more than I had bargained for. Three roosters out of the seven surviving live chicks in two orders was way more than anything I've heard your customers experiencing. I just had really bad luck or the sexing staff had little aptitude or training for the job.

 

[MyPetChicken]

Yes, Alex, MPC refunded me fully for all the errors, including two dead chicks. I have no problems with MPC customer service. It was a delight dealing with HQ. But refunds don't cover the stress involved, particularly the legwork needed to find homes for the extra cockerels after raising them for three or four months.

I'm just not willing to trust again whomever does the sexing since the error rate on my two orders was way more than I had bargained for. Three roosters out of the seven surviving live chicks in two orders was way more than anything I've heard your customers experiencing. I just had really bad luck or the sexing staff had little aptitude or training for the job.

I'm glad to hear you were refunded. I'm terribly sorry that your order had such horrible luck! So many errors on one order is extremely rare, I have personally never seen it happen before. There is a very small chance they were accidentally pulled from the Straight Run bin instead of the Sexed bins, which would account for the discrepancy. In any case, I understand your frustration. If you decide to give us a try again please send me a PM first. I would like to offer you a free chick from my Trust Fund.

Alex
My Pet Chicken

 

[nolakes]

Well Alex after hearing from you I've added 2 more hens to my April order!! I have faith in you and MPC. Send your ladies my way, especially that SULTAN! Please please please. Thank you for reaching out, I appreciate the good service here in Texas. Looking forward to April and will let you know about my babies when they arrive. Thank you

 

[MyPetChicken]

Well Alex after hearing from you I've added 2 more hens to my April order!! I have faith in you and MPC. Send your ladies my way, especially that SULTAN! Please please please. Thank you for reaching out, I appreciate the good service here in Texas. Looking forward to April and will let you know about my babies when they arrive. Thank you

Thank you! Let me know if I can help with anything!


Alex
My Pet Chicken

 

[Blooie]

Oh, @azygous I sure do remember your frustration over on the Mama Heating Pad thread when you got so many roos and had so many issues! Sitting in front of the computer reading all of the bumps you went through was hard! Didn't they at one time tell you (or am I thinking of someone else) that you had to wait until they were practically crowing before they'd do anything? If that was you, you have shown once again what a gracious and kind nature you have. I probably wouldn't have been as nice!

All I know is that my experiences have been excellent with MPC and I'm a forever customer. But Alex, if you are reading this, in the same posts where I've been praising MPC to the sky, it just seems so odd to me that most of us have nothing but glowing things to say about customer service and others have said they thought the customer service was deplorable. I've mentioned many times that I didn't understand how that could be, and said that if there was one thing that MPC might need to change it sounded like it might be better consistency in how problems are handled. As much as I hate to say it, some of that negativity could be from folks who are, shall we say, difficult to please no matter what you do. But I don't think that's always the case, either.

Personally I've had no issues whatsoever. My very first chick order was not good because the post office's tracking information said that they had been delivered on a Wednesday but in reality on that day they were sitting on the loading dock in Casper, Wyoming during an unexpected cold snap with sub zero temperatures. I even took a printout of the tracking that said they'd been delivered to our postmistress, who called the sorting facility in Casper. Yep, there they were. When I finally got the call to go pick them on Thursday up it was 19 degrees below zero! But when our postmistress here had called Casper looking for them, she made them put a sign on the box that said, "CARRIER, TRANSPORT IN CAB"! When I got them the sign was still on the box. I wondered how that poor driver felt having 19 live chicks peeping in protest alongside him as he drove the 5 hours from Casper to here in the dark on slick roads! I lost a few of those chicks, but the majority of them were just fine, all pullets just as I'd ordered, the correct breeds and are still laying well for me today! MPC made it good, although it wasn't even their fault. The second time ordered I wanted 8 Buff Brahma pullets. I got 8 strong, healthy Buff Brahma pullets, even though once again the tracking information said they were already delivered on Wednesday and I didn't get them until Thursday. I just ordered hatching eggs for the first time last month.

The one thing I've always wondered about, and I know this is a post office issue, is why we have to pay for express shipping knowing full well we aren't getting express shipping. That's always mystified me. Even on the MPC website there is a disclaimer written that says that the normal rules for Express Shipping don't apply to shipping chicks and the PO won't honor their usual guarantees. So we have to pay for it anyway? As I said, that's a postal service thing, but here we are so far out in the boonies that there isn't even any point in ordering or sending something out Overnight - we just don't have that service here. Every order that was supposed to take no more than 3 days has taken 4, yet they aren't responsible for chick losses - the hatchery is. Makes no sense to me!

As far as sexing bantams, I've also heard that that can be dicey. Speaking for myself, I have to confess that if I'd ordered them and had even a 90% sexing accuracy with them, I'd probably be okay with that. They can be tough.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I have paid the extra amounts for express shipping and since I have the post office brings them right to my door, that's worth the extra for me.

My first order ever went to South Carolina, My Pet Chicken found a home for them there and sent me a new order the next week, boy was I confused when the post master in South Carolina called me, that of course was the post office mistake but My Pet Chicken fixed it, a couple of those hens are still wandering around here too.