Whats better: order chicks or order eggs then hatch?

Here in the UK we can't send chicks through the mail, so collecting them in person or ordering fertile eggs are the choices. If I could order chicks, that would probably be what I'd go for, but I'd check out BYC feedback on a few different hatcheries before I placed an order, and I'd also wait for the correct time of year so that the weather hopefully wasn't either too hot or too cold for them as they came through the post, as I'd figure it would be my responsibility to give them the best shot at survival that I could.

I'd really like to be able to order chicks, as I'm fed up heating, feeding and rearing all these ***** roosters!

 

It depends on what you want. If you want all pullets then order chicks. With shipped eggs it is always a gamble some hatch fine and others not so good and the hatches are pretty much 50% female and 50% male.

 

I order the chicks and if the hatchery dosen't have a certain breed I want I buy some and incubate for fun. I do both but it's really a preference. Like someone said above, a hatchery can send all pullets.

 

Hatcheries can't get you 'show' birds or hard to find or rare birds.

so if you order 30 eggs to hatch, you can expect about 14 to hatch and only half of those will be pullets.

I once ordered 18 eggs, I hatched out six and all six were pullets. I should have bought a lottery ticket too, cuz that will NEVER happen again.

But if you want pullets of some rare breeds and pullets only, you can do McMurray or if you want OEGs, Ideal is great, but they are straight run.

 

If you can get hatching eggs locally, you can try that so the eggs won't have to go through shipping. However, incubating eggs is a gamble. I've done it twice. The first time I had great success. I thought - wow - this is easy. So I ordered a bunch of expensive eggs - 73 altogether....and ended up with only 7 chicks. Out of the six groups of eggs I incubated (5 shipped, 1 picked up locally), the local eggs were the only one that didn't even hatch one egg. So there are no guarantees. One successful hatch doesn't mean the next hatch will be successful.

However, despite that one bad hatch, there really is nothing quite like seeing a chick hatch - hearing those first little peeps. It's amazing.

 

I've order pullets and hatched their eggs and ordered shipped eggs from reputable sources.

shipped eggs-- only 5 hatched out of over 2 dozen. Those were set next to my own eggs which kept hatching until I now have 25 chicks from my stock.

The down side of hatching is the number of roosters that result. I'll use some for breeding but there are still extras. Have a plan to reduce this number: Craigs list, swaps, dinner, etc.

Hatching is really cool. A super learning experience. THe peep of a pipped egg is a true wonder.

THe most cost effective is buying pullets if you want egg layers.

 

They do not necessarily charge extra for sexing large fowl chicks. They will charge a premium for sexing bantam chicks and only a rare few hatcheries will do this.

 

Quote:Well, females are more expensive than males, so yes, technically, they do charge extra money for sexing 'em.

If you don't want to deal with roosters, order pullets only.