Please help me understand.

[Cammo77]

Hi everyone, I have a question for all you lovely North American people and this is in no way a judgement on how your system works over there. First of all I am Aussie and still fairly new to chickens. I have joined this forum and also follow a lot of chicken social media pages. I have seen a ridiculous amount of posts about people buying chicks from Tractor Supply Company. There have been many disappointing posts about poor quality of chicks plus inaccurate breed ID. Reading through the comments I see people saying to buy from local hatcheries and then people responding that they have no local breeders which I find hard to understand. I'm just trying to get my head around this whole situation. Are the opportunities to buy chickens limited in North America or is it that people who buy from this place just don't know any better? Are there strict laws on breeding chickens yourself so you don't need to rely on big corporate stores?

 

[TooCheep]

Plus not everyone wants the same breeds. As I mention on other threads, what I want isn't what my neighbors or other chicken people near us want typically

Yup. There are a lot of breeds available and we are spoiled with having stores/hatcheries to have a good selection. 100 years ago, we would have just been happy to have some mixed-breed/barnyard-mix chickens. Now we can be a lot more picky, so it can be hard to find what you want from a breeder locally.

Also, many just don't want to deal with the males. About 50% of the chicken listings I see on Craigslist are people trying to give away roosters.

 

[TooCheep]

Hello @Cammo77. I certainly can't speak for everyone in the US, but here is my take:

A large subset of backyard chicken owners live in cities or suburbs. Only a small percentage of people live in truly rural areas. Many of us don't even have roosters, so again only a smaller percentage of chicken owners would have fertile eggs to work with. Also, many of us have few contacts with chickens and are the exception in our neighborhoods. Finally, many are newer chicken owners after Covid, so only a subset have direct experience with breeding/hatching.

We often don't have lots of local contacts raising chicks and in my limited experience they are 60%+ barnyard mixes. If you want particular breeds, you may have a hard time finding them locally or at the time you want them. So, it is common to either go to one of the few local farm stores (ex: TSC or Rural King) or to buy online from one of the major hatcheries. They are just "easier".

I personally haven't had a problem getting the right breeds, though I did get one male this last year that was hatchery-identified as a female chick (out of 4).

 

[JacinLarkwell]

guess there'd be good money in breeding if you're allowed to on your property then?

Not as good as one would think. Since most people can't have males, they want sexed chicks or older pullets. Most private people can't sex chicks outside of specific sexlinks, and raising older pullets costs more than most are willing to pay, at least here. Plus not everyone wants the same breeds. As I mention on other threads, what I want isn't what my neighbors or other chicken people near us want typically

 

[Penpal]

If we want only a few, say one to five, we just run to Tractor Supply, or other similar store that sells chicks. But, if you wanted a large batch, say 25, you would probably order directly from the hatchery. I have done both. From either the local farm store or a hatchery, you are not getting the best of the best, but close enough to know if they are big or small, active or docile, etc. If you want to breed your own you would buy a hen and rooster from someone who shows their birds and is careful to breed to the SOP (standard of perfection).

 

[Ridgerunner]

The various farm or feed stores that sell chicks get them from commercial hatcheries that cater to that market or sell directly to the public. A lot of chicks are mailed directly to purchasers, some are trucked. One of these hatcheries may hatch around 80,00 to 100,000 chicks a week in season. I don't know how many of these hatcheries there are, but a lot. These are not the hatcheries that hatch the commercial egg layers or meat birds. One of those hatcheries might hatch 1,000,000 chicks a week year around. Again, there are several of those hatcheries. Many of these hatcheries are small family owned businesses, often second or third generation.

There have been many disappointing posts about poor quality of chicks plus inaccurate breed ID.

The hatcheries we use are for the mass market. They may have 20 roosters in a flock with 200 hens so mating is random. You are not going to get show quality birds from them. Breeders breeding for show put one specific rooster with specific hens carefully chosen as most likely to produce a show quality chicken. Even with the breeders carefully selecting who gets to breed with whom the vast majority of those chicks are not show quality. Some breeders say they can get one out of five chicks as show quality but others say they do well to get one out of 10 chicks to be show quality.

The birds we buy typically look like the breed they are supposed to be but they also typically have "flaws" that would get them disqualified in a show. They are typically productive, often laying ore eggs than the breed is supposed to.

Reading through the comments I see people saying to buy from local hatcheries and then people responding that they have no local breeders which I find hard to understand.

There are local breeders. Each state has poultry shows and crown champions. You may not be able to find your breed and some of these breeding for show quality don't want to sell their chickens. They don't want the competition at the shows. Some will sell them, even choosing breeding trios for you, but the costs you pay a show quality breeder are tremendously higher than a hatchery chick.

Are there strict laws on breeding chickens yourself so you don't need to rely on big corporate stores?

Absolutely not. Many people on this forum breed their own chickens. Not all are breeding for show quality, many of us breed for better egg production or for meat. Some if us do it just for fun.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Adding that if one wants just a few birds there are limited hatcheries that have "small orders" and those that do have enormous shipping fees.

For me buying chicks less than a week old from a feed store carries far less disease risk than buying from someone local selling started pullets or chicks hatched under broody hens.

My only TSC purchase of chicks has been a group of Blue Copper Marans that was marked down to $2 each as it was the end of the season.
I am happy enough with these pretty birds even if they could never be show quality.

One needs to do their homework when buying from a feed store and know what the breeds they desire look like as chicks. Feed stores sell far to many chicks to never make mistakes and mix them up. I think they try hard but lack some breed id capabilities.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not sure what you mean by social media trend? The system has sort of been there from the 1950's. I think it is more that back then the majority of people in the US (not sure about Australia) lived on the land on farms or in some other ways while now 90% or more are urban or suburban and don't have much actual knowledge of what's going on with where our food actually comes from. Since the advent of social media there are a lot of people posting and, for many, chickens have become pets instead of livestock. But the basic system of supplying chicks was set up a long time ago.

 

[NatJ]

What I mean by social media trend is seeing a tonne of carbon copy posts of people holding there red and white TSC boxes and then also memes being made about going there to get chicks. It pretty much flooded my feed so that's why I was confused thinking TSC had a monopoly on chicks.

Some of those may be impulse purchases (go in to buy dog food, see chicks, buy chicks.)

Others are probably people who did their research, built a coop, and are now buying the chicks. There can be various reasons for buying at the store instead of directly from a hatchery. The person may want to see the chicks in person before getting them, rather than ordering from a hatchery. The person may be worried about the chicks dying in the mail, and prefer to buy the ones at TSC (that were sent through the mail, but the customer only sees the one that arrived alive, not any that died on the way.) The person might want just a few chicks, which is not possible with some hatcheries and even the hatcheries that will sell small numbers will add a big surcharge because they have to pack the chicks differently to mail a small number.

The big hatcheries have been around long enough, and buying chicks from them is so easy, that there is not as much market for chicks from local breeders or smaller hatcheries (as compared with how much demand there would be if those big hatcheries did not exist.)

For shipping chicks through the mail, they do best with a certain number of chicks in the box. For many years the standard was 25 per box, although now I'm seeing quite a few hatcheries that will ship a box with 15 chicks. Either way, that many chicks produce enough body heat to keep them all alive and healthy during shipping, at least most of the time. (Bad weather, shipping delays, or poor handling by the Post Office can change that, but chicks arriving alive is much more common than chicks arriving dead.)

To ship smaller numbers of chicks through the mail, the hatcheries need to pack them differently: smaller boxes, insulation, sometimes a heat pack: all of this takes more supplies and a lot more time, so the hatchery usually adds quite a surcharge. It often costs the same amount of money to order 15 chicks or 3 chicks! Buying 3-6 chicks at the local TSC is quite a bit cheaper, because TSC was able to get them shipped in large numbers (much smaller per-chick shipping cost.)

 

[Australorpfamily]

who did their research, built a coop, and are now buying the chicks

That's what we did. Before we even bought our chicks we researched which ones we wanted, but we had also had an indoor bantam rooster for four years (4H project turned house chicken lol)

After chicken math happened and we found some olive eggers, we upgraded the coop before they were outside.

But, not all TSC chicks have happy endings