We have had a lot of people ask us.............. "Where do you get your chicks"? and "What makes your chicks any better than getting them from the feed store"?
Here is my rough draft on an answer to those questions, I'm going to call it PART 1 and answer the first questions. (Ill move onto PART 2 and tell you why we are better than the feed stores later!)......keep in mind it is a work in progress!! I have yet to have the time to sit down and organize all my thoughts and information into something easy to understand. BUT I have been getting this question a lot so I think that it is important to get some basic info out there! So if you have questions or suggestions please let me know.
We use a combination of 5 or 6 different small “family owned” breeders and several smaller hatcheries. It just depends on the availability, shipping dates, breeds and quality from past experience. You can rest assured that we do NOT (unless absolutely necessary) order from Murray McMurray!!
Our first choice is always the smaller hobby farms or family owned and run farms. We try our best to support the “little guy” rather than the large companies that mass produce and focus on quantity rather than quality.
Occasionally one of the smaller hatcheries offers a really good deal or the breeders just can’t keep up with our demand and we will have to order through them. We have gone through MANY hatcheries in the past. We have a pretty good idea which hatcheries produce the best quality and care. As stated above we DO NOT use Murray McMurray. (They offer more “exotic” breeds but the quality is not what it should be, the mortality rate when shipping is high, and the breeds are often not what are advertised.)
We work closely with several breeders throughout the US. We have weeded out the ones that are not as good as some others. Some of them are private breeders that do not sell to the “general public”, some are small hobby farms that sell limited quantities throughout the year and…………. If any of our poultry that we keep for ourselves stands out to be better than the rest we will occasionally hatch and sell some of our own poultry. ALL of our poultry comes from NPIP certified breeders HOWEVER, we are not YET NPIP certified ourselves. As we continue to improve our breeding stock and hatch out our own poultry on a regular basis we will!
Here is my rough draft on an answer to those questions, I'm going to call it PART 1 and answer the first questions. (Ill move onto PART 2 and tell you why we are better than the feed stores later!)......keep in mind it is a work in progress!! I have yet to have the time to sit down and organize all my thoughts and information into something easy to understand. BUT I have been getting this question a lot so I think that it is important to get some basic info out there! So if you have questions or suggestions please let me know.
We use a combination of 5 or 6 different small “family owned” breeders and several smaller hatcheries. It just depends on the availability, shipping dates, breeds and quality from past experience. You can rest assured that we do NOT (unless absolutely necessary) order from Murray McMurray!!
Our first choice is always the smaller hobby farms or family owned and run farms. We try our best to support the “little guy” rather than the large companies that mass produce and focus on quantity rather than quality.
Occasionally one of the smaller hatcheries offers a really good deal or the breeders just can’t keep up with our demand and we will have to order through them. We have gone through MANY hatcheries in the past. We have a pretty good idea which hatcheries produce the best quality and care. As stated above we DO NOT use Murray McMurray. (They offer more “exotic” breeds but the quality is not what it should be, the mortality rate when shipping is high, and the breeds are often not what are advertised.)
We work closely with several breeders throughout the US. We have weeded out the ones that are not as good as some others. Some of them are private breeders that do not sell to the “general public”, some are small hobby farms that sell limited quantities throughout the year and…………. If any of our poultry that we keep for ourselves stands out to be better than the rest we will occasionally hatch and sell some of our own poultry. ALL of our poultry comes from NPIP certified breeders HOWEVER, we are not YET NPIP certified ourselves. As we continue to improve our breeding stock and hatch out our own poultry on a regular basis we will!
