In an earier post sheepish mentioned she had heard of some mail order problems. I thought I'd pass ours along as I was wondering if anyone else had had unusual problems this year.(posted 8952 days ago)We got our chickens and turkeys from Belt Hatchery, we've used them in the past and they are very reliable and just all round nice folks to deal with. When we ordered they told us that there was a problems with airlines delivering live chicks and that they might discontinue doing it after some time in Feb. We placed our order to arrive before then.
We got our chicks a full 1.5 days late. When we looked at the airline routing they had actually (after a very very long delay at one airport) been shipped to Northern Kentucky Cincinnati Ohio airport and then trucked to us in Arkansas! We lost about 8 chicks and 16 of 20 turkeys! Belt Hatchery was very apologetic and did refund our money. We opted not to reorder since we did not want to make another batch of birds suffer so. Belt said that only one airline was currently accepting live birds and they were having lots of problems with the shipping. HAs anyone else experienced this?
We have decided not to use mail order hatcheries again, even though we have had good luck previously. WE now live in a much more remote area so that is part of the problem.
On a happier note, we have hatched our first chicks with an incubator at home and have a wonderful old broody hen sitting on 6 eggs now. Hope you all had better luck with your mail order birds!! Kim