I've always wondered about that. I don't buy chicks from the store but I've always assumed that the hatcheries might put some of their extra cockerels into the straight runs bound for TSC just to fluff out the orders and make a few extra bucks.
This time of year the hatcheries are so backed up they are pumping out chicks, throwing them in a box, and putting them in the mail. All the stores out there ordering 100s if not 1000s of chicks at the same time they are more busy filling orders.
The pullet only hatches the males are normally dispatched right there as soon as they can be sexed. They are not in business to feed chicks on hopes they might sell a few dozen of the males out off all the 100/1000s they sex every year. Hatcheries sell livestock. People on here keep chickens as pets but that isn't the hatchery main concern. The next hatch will have just as many males they have to dispatch. Some animal feed plant up the road will want them to grind up for dog food, reptiles, or raptors. They aint feeding them any longer than they have to and still make money off them dead or alive.
If hatcheries could figure out a way to only hatch pullets the pure breed rooster owned by a normal person would become endangered.
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