Why Do People Buy Live Chicks From Breeders and Farm Stores‭?

[townchicks]

I can guarantee you that their egg and bird conditions are as good or better than anything you can provide.

I have serious doubts about this. Federal regs are always the bare minimum required for survival. Currently, in California, we have a proposition on the ballot to require farmers to provide a minimum of one square foot of cage space per bird. This is supposed to be an improvement on current federal regulations. I don't think anyone on this site thinks that is a good quality of life. The box I carried my chickens home from purchase in was bigger than that. Lots of us raise our own chickens because the factory farms are unacceptable conditions to us.
The numbers you post are helpful to put things into perspective, however.

 

[Kiki]

Thanks for the post and hopefully this thread won’t get shut if everyone keeps their cool.
A point.
I inherited the incubator orphans. I do know how to integrate chicks. The people who looked after the chickens before didn’t.
These are not my chickens. I volunteered to take care of them when the neglect and lack of knowledge was causing a degree of suffering.
I’ve lived with these chickens as near as one can without sleeping in their coop, which I have done a few times so I could understand more about their behavior, for almost eight years now. Understandably I get a bit annoyed when people who have probably spent a fraction of that time with their chickens imply I don’t know what I’m talking about and need to learn.
I learn every day, but not from people, I learn from the chickens.
Now I get paid for looking after the animals here; it’s a job,

So you get paid to look after someone else's chickens. You are not so much doing it because you want to but because you are paid?


I think most of the posters in this thread do what we do for the love of chickens, our own chickens...and we do it for free.

 

[Kiki]

The meat bird industry is a whole other topic.

 

[townchicks]

I think most of the posters in this thread do what we do for the love of chickens, our own chickens...and we do it for free.

I think if you read a lot of @Shadrach other posts, you will see that he goes over and above what is required by his job. He has paid for veterinary care out of his own pocket, in one case he sacrificed his vacation money for a hen. I think that qualifies as love. The problem he faces is that he doesn't have control over the living conditions, as most of the rest of us do.

 

[007Sean]

I have serious doubts about this. Federal regs are always the bare minimum required for survival. Currently, in California, we have a proposition on the ballot to require farmers to provide a minimum of one square foot of cage space per bird. This is supposed to be an improvement on current federal regulations. I don't think anyone on this site thinks that is a good quality of life. The box I carried my chickens home from purchase in was bigger than that. Lots of us raise our own chickens because the factory farms are unacceptable conditions to us.
The numbers you post are helpful to put things into perspective, however.

Factory farms are only interested in the bottom line...making a profit. That's one reason there is so much chicken consumed in the USA, and in general is cheaper than other protein sources. The feed to weight gain ratio is better than in beef cattle. And if you raise a chicken to 3.5 to 4 lbs for slaughter, at slaughter you will still get 3.5 to 4 lbs of edible meat, due to the injection of water the government allows them to do. In other words little waste, big profit.

 

[Kiki]

I think if you read a lot of @Shadrach other posts, you will see that he goes over and above what is required by his job. He has paid for veterinary care out of his own pocket, in one case he sacrificed his vacation money for a hen. I think that qualifies as love. The problem he faces is that he doesn't have control over the living conditions, as most of the rest of us do.

I haven't read a lot of his posts yet.

 

[Shadrach]

I have read every post in this thread, and in general, agree with most of the posts.
I can not adequately comment on buying hatchery chicks, or letting broody's do the incubating, hatching and raising of chicks.

Reason being I raise pheasants and quail.
Not many hatcheries have the rare pheasants that I raise, same for quail. Therefore, I have to relie on breeders or shipped eggs. I prefer to get eggs and hatch them myself in an incubator. Or if possible to pick up eggs from a breeder. I've been doing it for years and haven't once had a diseased chick hatch. Deformed yes, never diseased. There is risk in shipped eggs but there's also risk in buying hatchery, farm store, and breeder chicks. I have a very strict BIOSECURTY program. When raising gamebirds in particular, it is or should be priority #1. And I try to stress that in alot of the threads I post on because it seems alot of people don't understand or don't think it will happen to them, and skip over the importance of biosecurity, until their asking for help on here for a sick bird.

Another reason for buying shipping eggs is,
most pheasants and quail do not go broody. I have had a few pheasants that did but they couldn't raise them...once they hatched, the hen ignored them, or the cock bird killed them. They would also stop setting half way through...the motherly instincts have been virtually bred out of pheasants. This is the reason I incubate.

Brooding pheasants and quail is completely different than brooding chickens. Pheasants and quail are more prone to overcrowding, takes more room to do so than chickens. Also, some species of pheasant chicks can not be raised together with other species of pheasants, like chickens are...they will kill other chicks not of their species. Most have different habitat and nutritional requirements than chickens. And unlike chickens, pheasants and quail can not be "free ranged". Most of the birds I have raised have become tame, eat out of my hand, if I sit down in the pen, they will walk and climb all over me, so I think they don't need a hen to teach them how to behave as a pheasant, or how to find food, or escape a predator. A few of them haven't had that bred out of them, yet!
I raised chickens 50 plus years ago, show birds. Back then I did the same thing I do today, I incubated my eggs, because of the breeding program I had for my show birds. I occasionally got other birds from breeders that were in my circle of breeders/ showers, for new blood. I knew the quality of the birds and reputation of the breeders, I never had a problem with a diseased bird back then either.
In conclusion, there are some good hatcheries, breeders and then there are the not so much ones, too! It all boils down to what a person thinks what's right for them. How and what they want from their chickens, their experience level, location and financial situation as to whether they go hatchery, farm store, breeder, incubation or the natural way to obtain their goal.

I have read every post in this thread, and in general, agree with most of the posts.
I can not adequately comment on buying hatchery chicks, or letting broody's do the incubating, hatching and raising of chicks.

Reason being I raise pheasants and quail.
Not many hatcheries have the rare pheasants that I raise, same for quail. Therefore, I have to relie on breeders or shipped eggs. I prefer to get eggs and hatch them myself in an incubator. Or if possible to pick up eggs from a breeder. I've been doing it for years and haven't once had a diseased chick hatch. Deformed yes, never diseased. There is risk in shipped eggs but there's also risk in buying hatchery, farm store, and breeder chicks. I have a very strict BIOSECURTY program. When raising gamebirds in particular, it is or should be priority #1. And I try to stress that in alot of the threads I post on because it seems alot of people don't understand or don't think it will happen to them, and skip over the importance of biosecurity, until their asking for help on here for a sick bird.

Another reason for buying shipping eggs is,
most pheasants and quail do not go broody. I have had a few pheasants that did but they couldn't raise them...once they hatched, the hen ignored them, or the cock bird killed them. They would also stop setting half way through...the motherly instincts have been virtually bred out of pheasants. This is the reason I incubate.

Brooding pheasants and quail is completely different than brooding chickens. Pheasants and quail are more prone to overcrowding, takes more room to do so than chickens. Also, some species of pheasant chicks can not be raised together with other species of pheasants, like chickens are...they will kill other chicks not of their species. Most have different habitat and nutritional requirements than chickens. And unlike chickens, pheasants and quail can not be "free ranged". Most of the birds I have raised have become tame, eat out of my hand, if I sit down in the pen, they will walk and climb all over me, so I think they don't need a hen to teach them how to behave as a pheasant, or how to find food, or escape a predator. A few of them haven't had that bred out of them, yet!
I raised chickens 50 plus years ago, show birds. Back then I did the same thing I do today, I incubated my eggs, because of the breeding program I had for my show birds. I occasionally got other birds from breeders that were in my circle of breeders/ showers, for new blood. I knew the quality of the birds and reputation of the breeders, I never had a problem with a diseased bird back then either.
In conclusion, there are some good hatcheries, breeders and then there are the not so much ones, too! It all boils down to what a person thinks what's right for them. How and what they want from their chickens, their experience level, location and financial situation as to whether they go hatchery, farm store, breeder, incubation or the natural way to obtain their goal.

Thanks for posting.
My OP questions the wisdom of buying live chicks.
Later in the post I stated that I thought incubation of eggs a better option.
My and my friends eventual choice was to buy a pullet and a cockerel from someone we knew.
This isn’t an option for many.
Personally I will always prefer to let a hen hatch her eggs. Many people who have posted seem to see some wisdom in this.
I understand for those just starting out this is an impossibility.
I would still favor the incubator route even if it is more inconvenient and more expensive.
Later in this thread the matter of cost arose. My view again is what seems to me to be a view that chickens are cheap to keep is misleading.
A decent level of care for any animals including chickens is quite costly.
Some would probably argue that they spend very little on the care of their chickens. I would be interested to see what their standard of care is.

So, to recap, it’s the buying of live chicks that I have concerns about.
Incubating is fine if you’re prepared to so the work of the hen.

 

[roosterhavoc]

Thanks for the post and hopefully this thread won’t get shut if everyone keeps their cool.
A point.
I inherited the incubator orphans. I do know how to integrate chicks. The people who looked after the chickens before didn’t.
These are not my chickens. I volunteered to take care of them when the neglect and lack of knowledge was causing a degree of suffering.
I’ve lived with these chickens as near as one can without sleeping in their coop, which I have done a few times so I could understand more about their behavior, for almost eight years now. Understandably I get a bit annoyed when people who have probably spent a fraction of that time with their chickens imply I don’t know what I’m talking about and need to learn.
I learn every day, but not from people, I learn from the chickens.
Now I get paid for looking after the animals here; it’s a job,

How many chickens do you look after?

 

[Kiki]

T
A decent level of care for any animals including chickens is quite costly.
Some would probably argue that they spend very little on the care of their chickens. I would be interested to see what their standard of care is.

So, to recap, it’s the buying of live chicks that I have concerns about.
Incubating is fine if you’re prepared to so the work of the hen.

Prevention keeps my costs down.
I prevent predators and illness.

I spend very little to keep my flock happy, healthy and clean.

 

[Mosey2003]

Prevention keeps my costs down.
I prevent predators and illness.

I spend very little to keep my flock happy, healthy and clean.

Same. My biggest routine cost is feed, and it's higher than "necessary" because I choose to feed high protein rather than bare minimum. When you put the money into the right things in the beginning, there aren't many costs down the line if you're smart about preventing illness and disease.