VERY UPSET ...Shipping of chicks through the USPS~

[mstricer]

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McMurray always ships on Saturday and although your local PO is not open late on Saturday or on Sunday, mail is still moving on those days. I can pick up McMurray chicks at the Keene USPS site on a Sunday night if they are nice enough to let me since that is the last stop before Fitzwilliam, my local PO. I didn't find that out until after I received my chicks last February but I received them on Monday morning at my local PO and only had 2 losses out of 29 chicks, one crushed and one failed to thrive. I've had a similar fatality rate with one batch of chicks hatched here, the other chicks in the bator messed up one chick who tried to hatch and one chick failed to thrive after a difficult hatch. Chicks die sometimes, it's just a fact, they are fragile creatures.

Shipping in winter is hard because of the cold, in the summer they get too hot on the trucks and dehydrate and die. Shipping chicks is never perfect but for every one horror story there are hundreds of successful shipments, if there wasn't they would have stopped it by now.

My tips for shipping chicks:

If you hear there is going to be bad storms between you and the shipper when your ship date comes up, cancel or postpone your order. Big hatcheries will have more of those same breeds some other ship date. With private deals it's up to you, if you don't want to risk the chicks just pass and find another person selling at a better time.

and

Never pick a ship date that preceeds a holiday weekend

Also, talk to other local chicken keepers, chances are someone has experience with shipping in chicks and can tell you how the PO in your area handles these shipments.

And, just a side note, kinda off topic, if you are buying chicks from your local feed store you are most likely still buying chicks that were shipped through the mail, just the feed store employees get to deal with any losses so you don't have to.

No worrys for me since, I live down the road from Meyers hatchery. No delivery for me till I order my Freedom Rangers. Did not know PO is open on weekends my local closes by 4:30 most weekdays and only open till noon.

 

[firedove]

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The Keene PO isn't actually open on Sunday but mail does arrive there on Sunday and the nice employees that work weekends will let you pick up chicks if you call ahead.

 

[Chosen Chickens]

As far as telling mcmurray not to send them on saturday... I am pretty sure that mcmurray, who ships thousands and thousands of chickens every day/week is up to date on shipping that works best. It doesn't make them any money to have all the chicks DOA if they just have to ship new ones out so it could be that through thousands and thousands of experiences they have found that shipping saturday equals the best ratio for live chicks out of any type that they do.

Like any smart business (especially ones that have been around as long as mcmurray) they will be aware at what creates the best cost benefit to them

 

[mstricer]

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The Keene PO isn't actually open on Sunday but mail does arrive there on Sunday and the nice employees that work weekends will let you pick up chicks if you call ahead.

Thats nice of them.

 

[EweSheep]

I refer this link to a good friend of mine who works at the USPS and this is what he has to say about this:

Hi Robin,

First off, USPS has a contract with FedEx and it is they who handle most of our Express mail shipments regardless of what is going through. I along with 30,000 other Postmasters will tell you that ordering "lives" to be shipped in the winter is NOT a good idea and here's why. It is 10 degrees outside and you want to put "lives" on a plane and send them up to 20 -30,000 feet? You have any idea what the temp is at those altitudes and sorry but FedEx does not heat up an entire plane to 80 degrees just because there "might be" some "lives" on the plane. The pilot does not always even know if he has them on, his job is to fly a plane full of packages somewhere. Anyone ordering "lives" this winter even from Alabama has not been paying any attention to the weather that has been blasting the south this winter and to expect Ashville NC (been there, I know it is in the mountains) and expect for these "lives" to arrive OK in the middle of one of the worst winters for the south on record is more than a brick short of a load. Ashville was on The Weather Channel this winter because of the pounding of snow they were getting it was that bad and the East coast is even worse. We were in Georgia last week seeing my family there and in 5 days had 2 winter weather advisories, IT SNOWED 3 INCHES IN 1 NIGHT THERE, it has been 30 years since north Georgia has had that kind of weather and 1/4" of snow will shut down counties there, they do not have snow plows, do not need them normally, it does not get cold enough there (except for this year.)

As for the scanning, someone missed the boat badly but that is happening more and more all the time. More and more things are "too be scanned daily". I use to scan 4 or 5 things a day and now I scan 40 - 50 barcodes a day. I even scan barcodes telling Washington I am done sorting mail, putting up box section mail, pulling collection boxes, everything except a barcode on the bathroom door and I'm sure that one is coming too. The "paid services" is for the "express" shipping and handling over regular service, the barcodes are just an extra to help with knowing where your shipment is.

Signed,
(name omitted for personal reasons) Postal inspector

Hope this comment helps!

 

[asher]

I will disagree with him only in that Monday and Tuesday were fine, temperature wise, locally. The low was above freezing both of those days. I had birds shipped in myself those days. Not day dibbies, but fully feathered started chicks. I still do not agree with chicks that early in the season shipping because the temps do vary so much/often, but Monday and Tuesday, it was fine.

I truly wish everyone would go to weather.com and search their local weather before they want birds to be shipped and schedule them for only when it's well above freezing. I do not think a reputable breeder will ship when it is not above freezing, despite whether they are "allowed" to or not.

 

[rancher hicks]

First let me say that whoever told you that Fedex carries "Express " mail for the postal service is LYING! I am a recently retired postal worker and Express mail is only handled by the postal service and IS scanned every step of the way. It is kept seperate from other mail. While it may be on the same delivery truck it is scanned. In fact one of my jobs was to go from one postal office to another and pick up the express mail and before I could leave I had to scan all the express pieces of mail. When I got to my postal unit the clerk had to scan it "received at unit".
There were however peices that were misdirected and misaddressed and w/ the wrong zip code.

I know none of this helps and I'm just ticked that this happened. You have my sympathy.

 

[ChickenCat]

My issue is not the shipper but with the Post Office.

To start ... I've had a stressful time tiring to receive my babies this week. In short: 16 chicks where mailed to me on Monday (Expressed Mail) from Alabama, they did not come to me in North Carolina until late Wednesday night! 8 of them arrived DOA!My issue is with the postal service also!

Last year my chicks were shipped on Saturday, and i received the phone call at 8 am Easter Sunday, my chicks were in our postal hub.
this year, no phone calls, chicks took from sunday to late Wednesday to arrive, 13 DOA and lost 7 more after that over several days.
replacemnt order, same thing happened, even though i had called the hub 3 times looking for the chicks, no response from them. And I told them not to ship to our neighborhood postal office, but to call ME and I'd come get them. Noooooo, they kept them another day longer and put them on the d$%^$ truck. 6 DOA and several died within hours after getting here.
chicks have been shipped thorugh the USPS for over 100 years, why have they lost all sense of protecting a live creature?

 

[daps2000]

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Ouch ... I'm so sorry for your lose... and I do understand ... that is why I drove to Asheville to pick them up ... I can't say enough about how nice the Asheville PO was ... and as for the above person ... who said that Fedex doesn't handle Express mail ... then why was I told that? Who knows ... there is a lot of opinion here ... and I opened a big jar of warms!
Of course a big jar of warms would make my hens happy!!

 

[Chosen Chickens]

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Um, then the entire post office where I love is lying as well as fed ex... I have talked with them both and they both said that fed-ex handles a lot of USPS express mail... so maybe in your little area it doesn't but every where else in the world it does