shipping day old chicks

[jerryse]

I would like to try shipping day old chicks and hope to get some tips from some members with experience.I have contacted the state ag. dept. & they are sending form 9-3 that needs to go whith them.I already have npip & will be taking a class 3/31/10 to be a blood tester.I have mostly bantams so any tips for shipping?  Jerry Segler

[John]

First check the postal regs for:

9.3.2 Day-Old Poultry

http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm300/601.htm#wp1064884
Even though they may be sent Priority Mail I use Express Mail.
Boxes and pads are available thru Cutler\'s Supply:
 http://www.cutlersupply.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7_101&products_id=661&zenid=m7bljgupk0j1csgtvm832nsjg1
I set eggs on Sunday evenings around 6pm, so I use the Sunday date 21 days later and 6pm as the time and date of hatch to write on the box top.  
I don\'t open the hatchers until Monday afternoons and take the chicks to the post office around 4pm to ship.  They leave on a truck around 5:30 and head to the Detroit airport.  

[John]

This is an old topic, but my post seem to fit the title...
I sent a box of 26 chicks to FL and there were only 17 in the box when the customer picked it up at the post office.    This is a first for me.  For years I taped the tops on the boxes in both directions, but lately I\'ve only taped in one direction.  I did notice a couple weeks ago a postal clerk lifting the top a bit on one side to get a better look at the chicks.  I wasn\'t happy about it and hoped it wasn\'t a common practice.
I\'ll probably never know if someone bent the top open and somehow 9 chicks were displaced along the way or if they were removed by someone that wanted them very badly.  Either way I\'ll go back to taping or banding the box tops on in both directions to hopefully avoid this problem in the future.

[Mike Gilbert]

Is it just me, or has this country really gone to the dogs?
Just recently in the news we had an I.C.E. supervisor, a government bureaucrat, helping to embezzle over a half million $ in unsubstantiated travel expenses.  Then there was the GSA spending $800,000 of taxpayer money on a lavish Las Vegas bash and bragging about it.  Every time you turn around there is another murder/suicide, another child missing, another young woman raped and murdered, another body found buried in someone\'s back yard.  A month ago an innocent young woman was shot to death by two young men with criminal records just 20 miles from here in an attempted robbery.  A month or so before that another young woman was strangled over a drug debt in the same town.   Has anyone been following the J. Edwards trial? This is our brave, new, secular world folks.  Open your eyes to what is happening in this country.    It\'s what happens when honesty, respect for life, and the accountability that comes with belief in a Higher Being and an afterlife are thrown out of our public institutions.  We can thank the liberal atheists and agnostics that dominate our higher public education and our legal system for this.   The end can\'t come too soon to suit me.

[OldChurchEggery]

John, do you think they may have died en route and someone at the post office removed them? I got some chicks last year through the mail that were sent priority rather than express, and by the time they got to my post office, many of them had died in transit. It was hot and our mail lady called to tell me there were some smelly, dead chicks in a box waiting for me. I know I would have rather the post office open a stinky, suspect package than let it sit around in the heat of day and get worse. Obviously I don\'t know the particulars about the shipment, but I hold out hope for humanity enough to err on the side of optimism. The chicks I got from you last year were bound up as tight as Fort Knox and it would have been tough to get into them without a box cutter. I hope returning to your old packaging method prevents this in the future.

[John]

I hope returning to your old packaging method prevents this in the future.

I just talked to our local postmaster and he\'ll look into it.
I mailed the chicks Tuesday at 4:14pm and the customer picked them up at 12:36pm very early Wednesday morning.  Less than 8 1/2 hours in the mail from Michigan to Florida and the 17 were in good shape.  Congratulations to the post office and Delta Airlines for fast delivery.  That may be a record for the distance.
I\'m inclined to believe someone bent the cardboard top open to get a good peek at the chicks and the box got bounced around enough that 9 dropped out.  It may be a stretch of the imagination, but for an employee to take 9 chicks during their shift is also hard for me to believe...due to logistics.

[Jean]

John,

If you sent the chicks express mail you can file an insurance claim for the missing chicks.

If your customer wants replacement birds I would ask the USPS for the cost of the box and chicks.

You get free insurance of up to $100.00 when you use Express Mail.  I would imagine that you would be eligible for a \"service refund\" also for the postage.

I generally don\'t ask for service refunds if lives don\'t get there on time, but this is a different issue and needs to be addressed.

Even if this was a case of the box getting smashed, lives are supposed to be hand carried and it shouldn\'t happen if people pay attention to their work.

[Beth C]

Even if this was a case of the box getting smashed, lives are supposed to be hand carried and it shouldn\'t happen if people pay attention to their work.  

Exactly! These weren\'t a couple books that slid out of a box, they were alive, and I doubt their fate was a good one. Totally unacceptable!

Has anyone been following the J. Edwards trial?

Unavoidable here. It\'s been satisfying watching him go down in flames, but the sociopath doesn\'t even realize it. He goes in and out of the courthouse smiling & waving to the crowd like it\'s a campaign event.

[Paul]

In one of our 2011 hatches, we sent a box to a lady
in New Hampshire (our 40th state).  While they were in
transit-two ducks mysteriously appeared in the box with the Ameraucana chicks!  Since then we started taping the ends of the lids shut.  The centers are tied with trotline fishing line.  Seems there is something each year to help keep the hobby exciting!

Mike we agree 100% with you for the problem and the ONLY solution is turning to our creator!

[Mike Gilbert]

Thanks Paul, and I agree.  There is no other hope.  It just seems sometimes like we are \"fiddling while Rome burns.\"

[Christie Rhae]

The last order of chicks I received had zip ties all the way around.  There was no way any chicks were getting in or out.  In fact it was a bit of a challenge getting that darn lid off.  lol  I just wanted to look at the chicks as fast as I could.

[greeneggsandham]

Is it just me, or has this country really gone to the dogs?
Just recently in the news we had an I.C.E. supervisor, a government bureaucrat, helping to embezzle over a half million $ in unsubstantiated travel expenses.  Then there was the GSA spending $800,000 of taxpayer money on a lavish Las Vegas bash and bragging about it.  Every time you turn around there is another murder/suicide, another child missing, another young woman raped and murdered, another body found buried in someone\'s back yard.  A month ago an innocent young woman was shot to death by two young men with criminal records just 20 miles from here in an attempted robbery.  A month or so before that another young woman was strangled over a drug debt in the same town.   Has anyone been following the J. Edwards trial? This is our brave, new, secular world folks.  Open your eyes to what is happening in this country.    It\'s what happens when honesty, respect for life, and the accountability that comes with belief in a Higher Being and an afterlife are thrown out of our public institutions.  We can thank the liberal atheists and agnostics that dominate our higher public education and our legal system for this.   The end can\'t come too soon to suit me.

Not just you.  I have been noticing things going to the dogs for fifteen years or more.  I voice my displeasure in the voting booth, but anymore, except for a few social issues, it\'s hard to tell the two parties apart.  This year, we may not even have that distinction.

[Beth C]

I voice my displeasure in the voting booth, but anymore, except for a few social issues, it\'s hard to tell the two parties apart.  This year, we may not even have that distinction.

Seriously. Anyone else irritated with the way everyone from the left-wing media to the republican establishment has been telling us from the beginning (even before the first primary) who the nominee was going to be? We\'ve been hammered with the message that it was inevitable and pointless to vote otherwise. Not that I ever got the chance to, since our primary isn\'t until next week - fat lot of good it will do at this point! So in the fall I\'ll do what I always do - vote against the guy I like the least. It would be nice to vote FOR someone once in a while...

[OldChurchEggery]

I do see a lot of complaints about the Post Office on this forum and others. Does anyone try to contact the Post Office or work the way up the chain of management there to get anything changed? How about getting in touch with your state delegate about the quality of local postal service? The consensus I get is that a lot of you are jaded about the way things are, but I guess part of being young and optimistic is that I think things can still work for the better.

Our delegate in the Virginia House is very responsive to local concerns and is quite approachable, especially compared to our Congressional Rep. He even wrote my parents a letter of congratulations when my wedding announcement ran in a paper with a readership of about 2,000 people. I wrote to him last year when the State Pollination Board was on the chopping block and even though he wasn\'t able to keep it from being cut from the governor\'s version of the budget, he did write a letter back. More likely his staff did, but all the same, it wasn\'t just a form letter. In college I took a number of courses on political efficacy and the general trend is that the bigger the scale of the election, the less effect people feel an individual vote has. So, focus your effort on the local level and you might be in for a pleasant surprise. It\'s probably no surprise, though, that my favorite Biblical verse comes from Proverbs: \"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.\"

[Mike Gilbert]

The Bible also teaches that mankind is fallen.  In fact that is one of its\' central teachings.  If a postal worker or delivery person really wants to steal chicks out of a shipping box there is nothing a politician or any bureaucracy can do about it.   There is nothing wrong with the postal system;  it has many great people working for it.   But all it takes is a few bad apples to ruin a reputation.  Thus my earlier rant.   When people\'s appetites are not controlled from within, it is very difficult to effectively control them from without.  That, in a nutshell, explains the value of true religion to the efficacy of any society.   Our overflowing prisons are sufficient evidence of that.