Poultry Policy
We very much appreciate your support of our family farm! We try top make owning poultry a pleasant experience for all our customers. Communication and setting expectations is very important so we have spelled out our policies. By reserving with us, you agree to these policies as a prerequisite of doing business with us. If you have any questions or concerns, address them before you commit. There are no exceptions to our Poultry Policies, so please read them carefully and be sure you are willing to abide by them before reserving your birds/eggs. You should also remember that we are real working farm. It is just the two of us and we both work full time jobs. So, there may be a delay in responding to your inquiries. Please be patient.
RESERVATIONS. Once you reserve your chicks/chickens/eggs we will reach out to arrange pick up. It is expected that pick ups occur no later than the weekend following your commitment. We are generally available 7 days a week by appointment!
MINIMUM ORDER. The minimum order is:
three (3) day-old chicks
two (2) grow-outs or adult birds
six (6) hatching eggs.
LIVE GUARANTEE. We guarantee the health of our birds. You have the right to look over every bird you get here while on the farm. Once they leave our care it is your duty to keep them alive. There is no further warranty on grow outs or adult birds. Chicks are warrantied for 48-Hours after pick up. If you have a chick loss, we will refund you, unless we have another chick of the same value left in the brooder. For refund or replacement you must notify us of the loss within 72 hours after you receive the birds and provide an emailed photo of any dead birds. This will be strictly enforced. Do not call us weeks later and say something died.
CHICK SEXING. A lot of our varieties are sex-linked or autosexing. Chicks from sex-linking or autosexing genes can be accurately sexed 100%. There are also some varieties we vent sex. This is an art. Even the commercial hatcheries get it wrong 10-15% of the time. We do our very best. If we offered a breed as SEXED and we make an error, we will refund you the purchase price. We will also accept incorrectly sexed roosters back to the farm after 14 weeks of age. If you order straight run we can also accept back any unwanted roosters. Please note that we can NOT accept any roosters younger than 14 weeks old since we run a bachelor coop and they are all adult males in there.
HATCHING EGGS. Please review individual breed pages for detailed breed information. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THE HATCH RATE OF THE EGGS YOU WILL RECEIVE! These are the same eggs we are incubating so we do know the on farm fertility before offering them. But incubators and incubating techniques vary. Your results will be anywhere from 0% - 100%. If you are not comfortable with this reality, do not purchase hatching eggs.
VACCINATIONS AND DISEASE. As a standard practice we do NOT vaccinate for Marek’s disease. If you are in need of vaccinated chicks, please let us know immediately and depending on the timing, we can vaccinate for an additional cost of $0.50 per chick. Please note that the Marek’s vaccine is not 100% effective, and even vaccinated birds may later contract Marek’s if the disease is present on your property. It can definitely help, but it is not a bullet proof vest. Vaccinated chicks must still be kept away from positive flock members for 14 days. The transmission of disease is a complex and subtle process.
QUARANTINE. We always recommend quarantine and observation for 21-30 days before exposing new birds to your chicken flock. But it is all up to you when you get home. We all have different tolerances of risk. Chicken illness and disease is so delicate. On the outside we can never see what is often going on inside. Stress from a move is often when you will see illness or even parasites present. Quarantine gives you time to access your new flock members and them time to destress and adjust. It's all up to you though!
WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT. You should expect birds that reflect the fundamental attributes of the breed we said they are. We are pretty picky and take great pride in what we raise but not every bird hits the mark! Just as every child is not destined to become a supermodel, every bird is not destined to win ribbons at shows. Only a tiny fraction of chickens conform to their breed standard in all respects. We do not represent that every bird we sell is show quality or is flawless. We cull for obvious defects like crooked toes, low fertility, low egg production, low disease/parasite resistance, and egg issues like egg bound/prolapses etc. We only want to pass on healthy birds.
NO FARM VISITORS TO THE POULTRY AREA. We'd love to spend time with you showing off our birds, but we take biosecurity very seriously, and visits expose our flocks to the potential for inadvertent disease transmission. We simply can't take that risk, so we don't allow any visitors in the poultry area. We take a lot of current photos of our flocks we well as videos and are happy to send you a clip of anything you need to see.
Thank you!