Shipping Chicks - Baby Chickens in the Mail

For the past five years or so I've shipped day-old Buckeye chicks all across the US, about 400 or so a year.

This year I'm taking off, for several reasons, and encouraging others to pick up the baton and run with it, to get some of their lines out there. One of those is my friend Sharon Fildes, who lives in Ohio, and who has a ton of various rare breeds of poultry and waterfowl. She also has some great Buckeyes, in both large fowl and bantam. And this year she's ramping up to hatch and ship a lot of large fowl Buckeye chicks at a very reasonable price.

She has a Facebook Page you should check out: S.M. Fildes Rare and Endangered Poultry, which she's still working on, but which will soon have her price list and photos of her Buckeyes. You can also email her to get on her waiting list, the time to do so is now if you want chicks in the spring! You can also find other breeders of Buckeyes on the American Buckeye Poultry Club website.

And for those of you who haven't shipped chicks before because you weren't sure what it entailed, I encourage you to do so. It's much more efficient and cost-effective than shipping hatching eggs, due mostly to the damage eggs receive during shipment which prevents them from hatching. If done right, shipping chicks is safe, easy, and gives one a much better base of stock to work with.

When I ship chicks I buy several items from Cutler Supply: 25 chick shipping boxes, sisal mat box liners, heater pads to ensure the chicks stay warm, and Grow Gel Plus, which keeps the chicks hydrated during their journey (I usually buy the larger bag of it to ensure I have enough in each box.)

Where I put the heater pad depends on what the temperature is out when I ship - when it's very cold I will put it on top of the sisal mat, when it's warmer I put it underneath the mat. But I always use one, as you never know where a box of chicks will wind up. I stop shipping in early June, as it's too hot to do so by then here in KY.

That's really all you need. Oh, that and a spreadsheet to keep track of your wait list, which if anyone wants they can send me a message and I'll be happy to share the one I have made up so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Your next step is to get your birds into breeding pens, make sure they're getting a good quality breeder ration, and collect eggs several times a day (eggs which get too cold lose fertility.) Do a test hatch or two to make sure your fertility rates are good, then hatch away!

I like to set hatches on a Monday afternoon or early evening, which means the majority of the chicks are hatched out by 21 days later, ready to ship by a Tuesday. I don't ship on Mondays, because there's often a lot of mail going out on Mondays and I want the birds to get where they're going with no delay.

I always ship chicks via Express Mail. It's just not worth it to to me to take the chance with Priority Mail, although I know some folks do. I generally include the cost of the shipping in the per chick price, so it's a flat rate for everyone.

I also have a roll of Express Mail tape that I convinced my local USPS to give me (they're really great in Grant County!) and I use that to put the boxes together. Once the chicks are hatched they get popped in the box and off to the PO I go.

I know some people print postage labels online, and while I do that for work, I'm more comfortable having the Posties do my labels for chicks, although I do get copies ahead of time and fill them out before I go. I also have some plastic envelopes that I use to attach the NPIP paperwork right on the box, in case the state to which I am shipping requires it.

Be sure to get the phone number of the person to whom you are shipping, as Express Mail labels require it, and then call or email the buyer to let them know when you shipped and what the tracking number is. That way they can be sure to make arrangements to either pick the chicks up at their local PO or to be home for delivery. Its generally easier on the chicks for the buyer to pick them up, just tell them let their local Postmaster know they have chicks coming and they will get a call once the box arrives.

That's really all there is to it folks. Easier than it seems, and a great way to get your customers the birds they're clamoring for. If you have any questions, send me an email, or stop by the Facebook Page for the American Buckeye Poultry Club and give me a shout, happy to help!

Chicks, Hens, and Daylight

A box of chicks ready to be shipped.
The green stuff is "Grow Gel" that
keeps them hydrated during the trip.

A dear friend of mine commented about a Facebook post this morning, asking me "There's a chick season?" She had thought I was hatching and shipping chicks out to customers now. While in theory, I could, I choose not to this time of year. Here's my reply to her (hi Zen!)

Yep, there's a "chick season." Egg production ebbs and flows with the length of daylight, which also coincides with temperature. Hens, especially in natural environments, usually take a break in laying when the days get short and it gets cold (it makes no sense for them to have chicks then, natch.)

They lay more in the spring, as the days get longer and it gets warmer. If I wanted to hatch now, I'd have to put lights on in their coops to give them a minimum of 14 hours of daylight a day. I choose not to do that.

Hens are born with all the eggs they will ever lay stored up in their tiny newborn chick ovaries. As they grow, their laying pattern will be dictated by their genetics and their environment. If they are bred for production, as in the common White Leghorn or Golden Comet or Black Star, they will start laying sooner, at around four months, and will provide the best "feed to lay ratio" of any breed of chicken. This means that they produce the most eggs for the least amount of feed, which is why they are commonly used by large production farms to lay eggs for commercial markets.

A White Leghorn in with
some Buckeyes in the snow.

We have about six White Leghorns, left over from A's 4-H project this past summer. Those girls lay up a storm, and at this point, when the light is lowest and temps are cold, are still laying. We're glad of that, as it means we don't have to buy grocery store eggs (we're spoiled, I admit.)

Our heritage birds, the Buckeyes, start laying a little later in their lives (at about five months), and lay between 150 and 200 eggs per year (as compared to a Leghorn, which can lay up to 300 or more!)
They have all but stopped laying at this point. I don't mind, as I feel it's a good thing to give them a rest, and I want to keep the hens as long as possible. If you put lights on birds, you force them to use up all their available eggs that much sooner, and they become "spent" hens at age two or three. I like to keep my Buckeyes until they are four at least, as an older hen will lay a larger egg, and that will produce a larger, healthier chick. So I don't force my birds to lay when they'd rather not. It just seems more "natural" to me that way.

Summer means extra males

Summer usually finds us with a plethora of young chickens, many of whom will not stay here forever. With poultry, a good ratio is about one male to every ten females. However, Mother Nature doesn't let us hatch them that way, more's the pity. Often the ratio hatched is about 50/50, sometimes more one way, sometimes more the other.

The problem begins when all the teen-aged roosters (which we term cockerels in the poultry world) start to have their hormones kick in. They get randy. They get obnoxious. They get over-eager and make pests of themselves to the females. And too many of them can actually gang up on a poor female and in their stupid exuberance, kill one. So they have to be thinned out.

I had a long call yesterday from a woman who had purchased chicks from me earlier this spring. She was in the midst of deciding which males to cull, and needed help. (Culling can mean any number of things, but bottom line, it means remove from the breeding pens.) She wanted to know how she was supposed to determine which young males to keep, and which to cull.

We went over a number of areas to look at, aided in part by the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection, which lists the various characteristics of the various breeds. There are specific traits that should be adhered to, and following the Standard is always the first place to start.

But reading about characteristics and applying that info can be two different things. And the best way to learn how to do so is to have an old-timer teach you first hand. But not all of us are lucky enough to have such mentors available, so we turn to others and the Internet for info.

The breed club for which I am Secretary/Treasurer, the American Buckeye Poultry Club, has a copy of the breed standard for Buckeyes (the breed we are focusing on here at the farm now.) If you're a member of the club, you can read it here. If you're not a member, you can always check your Standard (and if you don't own a Standard, get one!)

Another organization, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, has published a step by step process by which you can assess young birds for good meat qualities and rates of growth, see it here.

Between the two, one can usually figure out which males to keep, and which need to go. We sometimes butcher our own extra males, as Buckeyes make great meat birds. Sometimes we sell some of the extras to a friend who has a market for them in a larger city nearby (yellow-skinned birds appeal to certain ethnic markets it seems.) But one way or another we winnow the numbers down. Right now we have three adult males who preside over a pen of about twenty five adult females, along with about nine young males and twenty or so young females. More than ideal, but they all get along well, and don't overbreed the hens, so they're ok for now.

Later in the summer I may rotate out the oldest male, or put him in a pen with some of his great-granddaughters, to linebreed for some reinforcement of his excellent qualities. For now, the remaining "extra" cockerels have the run of the pen, and are living life pretty large. They have more than half an acre to roam, bugs to chase and eat, and cool shade under the big oak and ash trees. Live doesn't get much better for a chicken these days. Come fall, things may change, but for now, Life is Good.

Heritage Chickens: Buckeyes

Over the last four years or so, we've grown to just adore Buckeye chickens, for a variety of reasons. There is the emotional connection: I am from Ohio, and on my grandparent's farm in front of their house is a large Buckeye tree. My grandfather used to carry Buckeye seeds with him always, when my mom and aunt were sorting through his clothes after his death, they found a Buckeye in almost every pocket of every jacket and coat. So the idea of a chicken called a Buckeye was immediately appealing to me.

We got our first Buckeyes from my friend Matt John of Shady Lane Poultry, back in '06. Getting them was actually a mistake, they had slipped in with a batch of chicks Matt had hatched for our 4-H group, and when he saw them and mentioned it, I snatched them up for us and took them home. We started out with only four birds, one cockerel and three pullets. We liked them from the start, they grew fast and were very vigorous.

The following year we got some more chicks from Matt, as I wasn't set up to hatch eggs from that pen at that time. I had a couple of different breeds in it, all of which day-ranged together, so had no way to ensure the eggs would be purebred. But as time went on, we grew to like the breed more and more. And last year we decided they would be the only large fowl breed we'd work with, as they had everything we liked: gentle temperament, healthy, pea comb (which prevents frostbite), good dual-purpose qualities, good layers of eggs, and the extra cockerels dress out well for meat.

So last year we hatched a bunch of chicks, and the response has been astounding. This year I have a ton of orders for chicks, and have been shipping a boatload of hatching eggs. I am even about to order a new digital incubator and setter, to ensure I can get really good hatches from everything I set.

Of course, there's also the breed club we started for the Buckeyes. In the fall of '07, we took Buckeyes to the Ohio National poultry show (our very favorite show.) Colleen and Allie won BB with their cock bird, (James says they did even better, I need to go back and check the coop tags to be sure.) Colleen asked me if she'd get points for the win (breed clubs award points to their members for show results, and at the end of the year the person with the most points is awarded a prize of some sort.)

However, at that time there was no breed club for Buckeyes. When I told Colleen that, she insisted we start one, so the following March I started a Yahoo Group for Buckeyes, to gauge the level of interest in the breed, and was surprised at how quickly it took off! I knew I wanted to make it a real club; with elected officers and bylaws and the like. At as of the summer of '09, we're all set. The American Buckeye Poultry Club was officially registered as a 501(c)3 non-profit, and has grown quickly.

We've been lucky to have the support of Jeannette Beranger of the ALBC, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy:
and some of the top/longtime breeders of Buckeyes: Duane Urch, John Brown, and Bob Rhodes are all members and support the club. The increase in interest in the breed has been helped along by a wonderful article written by Christine Heinrichs in BackYard Poultry Magazine, which can be seen here.

But even without the rise in popularity of this bird, we'd still love them. They're friendly, personable birds. They get along with each other and humans well, and we think are just the best all-around farmstead bird there is. The ability to show them and market them is just the icing on the cake. And at the end of the day, I know my grandfather would be pleased as punch at the whole idea of his granddaughter raising birds named after his favorite tree.