I wouldn't buy because of the "tours" thing alone...well that and the "exchanging."
Maybe they "lysol" you before the tour?
My last flock was bought from Blue Star Ranch. I was a bit younger (17) and knew very little about chickens; we went with BlueStar because my parents didn’t know better and we thought that ordering online would end up in a delivery of a box of dead chicks.
My last flock was bought from Blue Star Ranch. I was a bit younger (17) and knew very little about chickens; we went with BlueStar because my parents didn’t know better and we thought that ordering online would end up in a delivery of a box of dead chicks.
I don’t want to totally trash it, but.. the entire experience was very strange. My dad and I took a road trip out there and we were told to just show up any time. The place was a total gross mess (disheveled buildings, torn up road, and an overwhelming chicken poop smell). We were greeted by several locked gates and barking flea ridden dogs (I distinctly remember the fleas as I told my boss, a vet, about it the next day) and we had to wait quite a while for her to answer her phone and come let us in.
The most confusing part was, she doesn’t hatch or breed anything there. All her chicks were ordered from ideal, she just raises them and resells them. I don’t know if that’s normal or what, but we were confused by it. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see the advantage for paying a higher price for hatchery quality chicks that you could order yourself.. maybe she does things differently now, I don’t know.
I don’t remember taking any tour but I have a bad memory. I do remember that she already had our order pulled out and waiting for us with all the chicks sitting in two cardboard boxes. She pulled them all out one by one and held them to her ear, reassuring us that she could 99% tell gender by the pitch of their peep. We didn’t question it as she was an interesting character. She also tried to sell us extras and had little “discounts” that she kept throwing in.
I’m honestly not just trying to bash the woman, she seemed nice, if not a little “eccentric” (if you catch my drift). That was just our experience, and since we didn’t know better we chalked it up to “strange chicken lady” behavior.
All in all, we walked away with 18 healthy 2-3 week old chicks (I don’t think she even sells day-olds?), with 3 ending up being roosters. They were nothing special. We were expecting a quaint little family farm with their own breeding stock and got something vastly different. I can’t really say how I feel as I’m still as confused as I was back then lol. Perhaps she’s changed everything up since then..
Thank you. I was mildly interested in her chicks. Now I'm very interested (in her eccentricities) and afraid to buy there. Lol. It might be worth a day trip just to meet her.
I thought I had read something like that in the past but when I googled blue star I couldn't find anything this time. I did find a post here on BYC that she had made, where she complained about her hoa in 2015 .
Good point!
