Please help me understand.

[Cammo77]

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.

This is all definitely all making sense now. Great point about the disease/parasite potential too. I have a hatchery I was going to get our next batch from and they vaccinate for everything plus they offer a take back for roosters. They're a small family run business that are fairly local to me.

 

[Predoggg]

I have bought chicks from a local breeder. They are unsexed and if you can't have a rooster not so good. I decided to go with the hatchery chicks and had good experience so far. I will get chicks at TSC if I see some.
I also have someone who sells pullets (buys the day old chicks from a hatchery) but this person stopped selling them. We started to raise a couple chicks and see how things are going.
The local breeder also organized a chicken swap once a year which is wonderful.

We are getting a rare breed from a family breeder but they are nearly 4 hour drive away from us. Hoping to help with the keeping the breed alive and also making them available to more chicken keepers.

I think what each person has available depends where they live. The big hatchery's are available for all over the US.

 

[Australorpfamily]

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?

Where we are, an hour from any major city in any direction, we have TSC, Rural King and a couple family owned farm stores in a 50miles radius. Trying to find chicks, in good quality can be somewhat unpredictable in our area, even though we are farm area. We wanted a variety of color and only certain breeds, so we scoped out our local TSC (10 minute drive into town with all our groceries) our tsc allows minimum of 4 per order and they generally have a variety of breeds. This particular year they had more pullets than straight run, which is odd for the beginning of "chick days" (which is commercially advertised).

We have been reaching out more for hatching eggs locally, but I've only found two within a reasonable distance from us

 

[BDutch]

Thank you. Sounds like some pretty good laws there in regards to chicks. We have a mix of everything here. Backyard breeders, show breeders, markets and small hatcheries. You can also order hybrid commercial egg layers as well but usually as pullets. I wish I could import some Barnevelders from you guys as our genetics over here for them is limited.

Hybrid commercial layers (pullets) are sold here too. It seems they don't live very long in general (ovary issues).

I wouldn’t be keen on getting Dutch Barnevelders either. It seems they are vulnerable for Mareks disease. And I believe this is an awful disease to have in your flock.

One of the reasons I buy hatchery eggs if I want more chickens , is because I like to avoid getting sicknesses in my existing flock.

 

[Cammo77]

Hybrid commercial layers (pullets) are sold here too. It seems they don't live very long in general (ovary issues).

I wouldn’t be keen on getting Dutch Barnevelders either. It seems they are vulnerable for Mareks disease. And I believe this is an awful disease to have in your flock.

One of the reasons I buy hatchery eggs if I want more chickens , is because I like to avoid getting sicknesses in my existing flock.

We bought 6 ex cage hens that 18mths old and have lost 3 due to reproduction issues. That's why we gone with heritage breeds now.

I think I'll be buying week olds from a hatchery now as they're all vaccinated.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

There was a surge in chicken interest when the price of eggs went through the roof. TSs are all over the place and offered convenience to old and new chicken folk, understandable. With me local hatcheries were more or less a given as that was all I knew as a kid back in the late 50s and early 60s and in the 80s we were able to get our chicks from the same hatchery. Last January 2023 when we decided to get back into chickens again we had to do a search for another local hatchery. We found a hatchery/breeder an hour and half away, TS and local feed stores were never given a thought as it always seemed to be a grab bag. Just to put into perspective a feed store is 15 minutes away and TS 30 minutes away. The breeder/hatchery 1 1/2 hrs away, had what we were looking for and sexing was 100%. As a bonus, we were supporting an independent who had the "states official seal".

 

[Molpet]

After WW II my dad was a garbage truck person and there was a local hatchery on his route. It supplied the local farmers. It's been out of business for probably 50yrs. When the hybrid layers and broilers took over the farming poultry.
Most small farms had poultry, but when the store started selling cheap eggs and meat people quit. My great uncle pulled his hen house up and attached to the house as an extra bedroom.

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are over 2,200 Tractor Supply stores scattered around the United States. I don't know how many sell chicks, probably most. Some sell for a few weeks in the spring, some sell chicks for most of the spring and summer. Their are other national chains like Orscheln and Rural King. There are some regional chains. No one has a monopoly.

Last I checked Tractor supply got their chicks from three different hatcheries but that was a few years ago. I don't know which hatcheries they are using this year.

Cammo77 I have included links to some of the hatcheries we use. There are a lot more than this. We can order directly from them or drop buy and pick up chicks if we live close enough. It might help you understand the system.

https://www.cacklehatchery.com/

https://www.hoovershatchery.com/

https://meyerhatchery.com/

https://www.idealpoultry.com/

 

[Cammo77]

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.

We wouldn't have the same amount of breeds as our animal import laws are extremely strict and being a big island it's hard to smuggle animals into the country, which I am happy about though as we're still dealing with morons importing destructive non-native species 200yrs ago.
We do have the same issues with unwanted roosters but there's plenty of people who will take them and also the hatcheries I've looked at offer a take back guarantee for roosters.

 

[Cammo77]

They sell a lot of chicks. Even a small percentage of problems leads to a lot of reports.

Great point