The sad story of the chicks...

[Shiloh Acres]

I am so sorry to hear of that happening. What a heartbreak it must be, and the financial loss and loss of ground to your goals as well. Such a shame that one batch of chicks could cause such devastation to your entire flock.

I would appreciate the name via pm as well if you are willing to share. I TRY to keep my flock as closed as possible, but after predator losses and turning out 60-75% roos, I am down to only 1-2 hens per breed for next year's hatch. I don't think I can keep going without adding diversity to my genetics.

Thanks if you can. And either way, sorry to hear of your problems.

 

[MsPony]

Thats horrible *hugs*

Please do PM me the hatchery name, I will pass this along to my feed stores and make sure they do not buy from them!! I wouldnt wish this disease upon anyone.

 

[Boogity]

Please PM me with the hatchery name. I'm so sorry for your loss. What a bummer!

 

[lwheelr]

I think they'd tell me that they were implementing an immunization program if they were going to.

I told them that we are in the process of building a varied poultry flock, and that we'd be ordering thousands of chicks, ducklings, poults, etc, over the next year, and that we needed to develop supplier relationships to ensure that we got healthy stock. If they were going to change this, then they'd have told me - you don't just whistle repeat customers away unless you can't satisfy them. They could have informed me of changes without admitting fault - corporations are experts at that.

You see, I know, and they know, that this did originate from them. They choose not to acknowledge it, and they choose to let it sweep through their flocks.

It won't hurt their flocks from their perspective (because the immune compromise in their adult flocks will only be minor - enough to compromise their ability to pass immunity to their chicks, and to make it a little more likely that they'll contract some diseases, but not enough to affect significant mortality) - it will only hurt their customers. Their chickens will keep on laying, they'll keep on hatching out eggs, and shipping out chicks. The chicks won't start dying until they are in someone else's care, where they can blame it on something else.

While they do supply some broiler and layer houses, a large body of their customers are people like me - ordering chicks in smaller batches. Customers like that tend to think they had bad luck and not order again, or they think maybe the feed wasn't right, or something. They almost never think to look and see whether a contagious disease is sweeping through their flock. They usually don't have the numbers I did to observe and draw statistics and patterns from.

I think they are stupid. Because this WILL go through all of their layer houses, and it will infect all of their brooder houses. Eventually they will do something about it, but not until it has harmed untold numbers of small farmers and backyard chicken raisers.

I've already found other complaints online that the chicks from this company "didn't do well", died in large numbers, only a few survived, and those seemed very disease prone. So it is out there in chicks other than just ours.

 

[patandchickens]

Remember that the basic mentality of commercial chicken farming -- whch big hatcheries *are*, just a different and more-retail type clientele than broiler or battery farms -- is "as long as they mostly live or can be replaced inexpensively when they die, then that's ok as long as it doesn't cut into your bottom line". I am not necessarily criticizing, it is just a very different perspective than pet chicken owners or some small breeders choose to have.

There's just no way they're going to be able to test for all diseases, and large commercial hatcheries are quite obviously in it for profit/volume not quality, so it always surprises me when people are SURPRISED that things like this happen.

Pat

 

[lwheelr]

I'm not surprised that they HAVE diseases in their flocks. I AM surprised that they don't seem to care that they have one that is so destructive.

I mean, good business dictates that you provide a quality product - not one that not only self-destructs, but which also infects and destroys all other similar livestock in a receiving facility.

 

[whenchickensdream]

So sorry to hear. It is so frustrating when trying to get some new blood lines into your flock. Please PM me the name of the hatchery so I know not to bring the disease into our flock. Thank you.

 

[BarredBuff]

I know you have PM'ed out the ying yang but could please PM me?

 

[ORChick]

Do you have the strength for one more PM? Sounds like there are a lot of us wanting to add to our flocks this coming year. Thank you for passing on this information; I'm sorry you had to go through this tragedy.

 

[Boogity]

Something doesn't smell right here. Why don't you just tell us who the supplier is? What seems to be the problem with telling us?