Ordering Chicks

Finding an inexpensive supplier of chicks that will ship you a small number can be difficult. Yes, there are a million different hatcheries out there, but it takes time to comb through their websites (which are almost universally poorly designed) to find information about order limits and prices. The vast majority of hatcheries will ship a minimum of 10 or 25 chicks, the reason being that at those numbers keeping them warm is a natural process. Also, for the better part of the last century mostly commercial operations were ordering chicks, so hatcheries designed their business to accommodate them, which means minimums of 10-25 chicks. That leaves most of us out, unfortunately, unless you're organized enough to create a buying club in your area. Different ordering options are popping up slowly, but some take a little digging.

Those hatcheries that ship fewer chicks typically put some kind of heating material in the box and will require Express Shipping - i.e. expensive shipping. MyPetChicken is one place, and this is where we eventually ended up ordering ours, but it's more expensive than I wanted ($30 shipping). This was our last resort, due to some lack of foresight on my part. Apparently, farms order chicks in advance of when they need them (ridiculous, right??). I really wanted to find a local hatchery, so I could support the state economy and eliminate the shipping costs. My first call was to a local feed store, which let me know they get chicks in May - too late for us, we want eggs before there's snow on the ground. Then, I happened upon a state hatchery listing in Backyard Poultry and found Nature's Hatchery in Naperville, IL.

This fit the bill, although their prices for small orders are high - $10 a bird - you can pick them up from the hatchery eliminating the shipping costs. Sounds good right? Gave them a call in February to place an order, talked to a friendly sales person who told me they were sold out till June. Clearly, if you do this as a business you're more "with it" and order more than 3 weeks before you want baby chickens. Ugh.