I\'ve filled just over 1/2 of the orders for chicks for this season.
There have been some problems.
The bantam buffs and LF lavenders have not cooperated very well. They didn\'t lay enough eggs early enough. Many LF lavender eggs that were fertile, just didn\'t hatch and some that did had feathers on their legs, so that cut down on the number of shippable clicks. It\'s getting a bit better now.
Out of 15 LF partridge Chanteclers in one coop, 8 went broody at the same time and that sure cut down on the number of eggs available to set. Now it looks like 4 or 5 of the LF buffs want to set, besides one LF black and others.
For years I sent chicks by Express Mail and overall it was fine until FedEx started accepting lives and flying them for the post office. I\'ve had chicks arriving late and stressed, plus two boxes of dead chicks that went Express Mail a couple weeks ago. I\'ve switched over to all Priority Mail and it made a huge difference. The lives I send by Priority fly out of Detroit on Delta (used to be NorthWest) and out of 7 boxes sent last Tuesday 6 were delivered the next day. The 7th was delivered early the second morning and all the reports I received said all the chicks were in great shape. You may not have the same results, but because the post office has a special deal, with Delta, to ship lives from Detroit and St Paul Priority is better for me.
I\'m still accepting a few more orders for Hatchery Choice Bantams and Surplus chicks if anyone is still interested. Meanwhile I\'ll keep trying to fill the hard to fill orders.
