WARNING: Hoovers hatchery

[Akgmrw62]

Ok, I was legit curious.
I've ordered 100s of chicks thru the mail in the last several.decades but not so much anymore. And ya I'd be fine if I never do again.
But for real those numbers don't add up in my experience. Not even remotely.
Thank you for answering though.

I agree chicks that are shipped during cold with out heat packs is not right. First time ordering this year from Hoovers for a hatch date of March 5. I got them 2 days later and all 25 were chirping and happy. Sad id imagine to open your shipper and find dead birds. I guess I lucked out. Looking thou lgh found Cackle and they are only about hour or so west of me so when do order more will be doing that and just picking them up.

 

[ACS285]

Thats terrible! I'm sorry.
But, its not really their fault. It's too cold to be ordering chicks right now. Every year there's scores of posts complaining about every hatchery. It's not the hatchery, is the shipping through cold fronts and negative temperatures. They don't bounce back.
Imo, Hatcheries shouldn't be offering chicks until the beginning of March for non retail orders over a certain distance.

I agree that the whether is definetely the biggest issue that made things go wrong here, but the fact they didn’t include a heating pack and fix that problem is in my opinion is cruel, I assumed heating would be included and so I didn’t question it too deeply

I order plants every spring and they refuse to ship until the weather is appropriate. Someplace dealing with living creatures should be expected to be more careful. It's not hard to look at the zones and determine if they ship or not and whether to include a heat pack. That's irresponsible.
We also ordered our chicks from Hoovers and our chicks were all ok. I'm very sorry for your experience though. That's not a package I'd wanna open.

 

[Greg Zeigler]

I consider animals dying a slow death in a box as cruel. Something like 11% die during shipment and 50% perish within a week.
If you do a search there’s major single shipments of several thousand chicks dying in transit.
It’s not necessary to me. I reckon people had chickens for 1000s of years before USPS.

I ordered California Whites from them years ago(Spring time) and they all arrived alive and well. They grew up and produced plenty of eggs. Most hen houses are nothing but rectangular boxes...

 

[gimmie birdies]

I order most of my chicks from Meyers. I only had a problem one time, it was late Oct. and I ordered 15 there was no heat pack. It gets cold here. 5 looked dead on arrival. I put them on a heating pad right away, and gave every one a sip of warm yolk water. I also gently massaged their little heads. Only one of the 5 died. I always give arriving chicks yolk water. If I do order in cold weather, I will request a heat pad, even if it costs more.

We have had a really cold cold snap recently and I saw hatcheries were not shipping in that very cold spell which was a good thing.

Last Dec I ordered from Meyers. I usually the order is here by Wednesday. In Dec last year it was delayed one day delivered on Thursday because of a snow storm. No heated pads in or under hay in box. All dead. Cold. I ordered again to replace, I only lost one chick, once again no heat pads.