Frequently Asked Questions

Most hatcheries require 15 or 25 baby chicks per order because the chicks need one another's body heat to survive their 2-day journey. This is a big pain for lots of people who just want a few chickens! Since our goal in life (yes, our goal in life!) is to make your life easy, we've partnered with a forward-thinking hatchery that has developed a brand new way of shipping baby chicks that includes a high-tech, long- last heating element. This keeps the chicks nice and warm for their journey! And when you order fewer than 15 chicks we automatically send...

Unlike other hatcheries that may add "males for warmth" to fill out a small order, we will never do that because we understand how important it is for our customers to be able to receive small orders for their urban and suburban locations: that is why they purchase from us in the first place! Even with My Pet Chicken's revolutionary method of shipping tens of thousands of small orders of chicks safely across the country alive and well, the absolute fewest number of chicks that ship safely is three large fowl chicks (or five bantam chicks). Remember, this is the...

They'll be less than 72 hours old. They ship Mondays and Tuesdays as soon as they're hatched and the birds you've reserved have been packed into your shipping box with anything they may need (like custom amounts of nesting material and ventilation as well as heat packs for small orders). They can arrive any day of the week between Tuesday and Thursday, depending on your location and how the Post Office services your area.

Neither Fed Ex nor UPS will ship live baby birds, so we ship all orders of fewer than 15 chicks via the speediest service that the Post Office offers for baby chicks: USPS Express Mail. Orders of 15 chicks or more are shipped by USPS Priority Mail. Your chicks can arrive any day from Tuesday to Thursday of your scheduled shipping week, assuming that they ship on a Monday. (Our chicks almost always ship on Mondays, unless there is a national holiday that Monday, in which case they will ship on a Tuesday!) Exactly which day chicks arrive at your...

Unfortunately, no! Chicks are usually shipped on Monday unless there is a Federal Holiday. Then they are shipped on Tuesdays. Smaller orders of 3-14 chicks automatically ship USPS Express Mail, and larger orders of 15 chicks or more are shipped via Priority Mail service. Why can't I get my chicks shipped on a different day of the week? The short answer is that chicks wouldn't survive.The long answer: Right before the babies hatch, they absorb their yolk sac, which sustains them with hydration and energy for their journey to you. But the yolk sac only provides about 2-3 days' worth...

Right before chicks hatch, they have just absorbed the last of the yolk. This sustains them during their journey, for up to three days, so that's why they need to ship at that time, when the yolk will sustain them. The reason nature works this way is that if they were hatching beneath a mother hen, this would enable the early hatchers to survive without eating and drinking until mother finished hatching the rest of the eggs. She can't get up from the nest until the entire hatching is over, or else the last babies would die in their shells,...

Our chicks are hatched in the wee hours on Monday* of each week during the hatching season, and they're sorted, sexed, vaccinated, packaged, and shipped either Monday or Tuesday. (*Except when a holiday falls on a Monday, in which case they're hatched on a Tuesday.)

Coccidiosis is an infection caused by a protozoan, and it is found in most environments. However, the coccidiosis vaccine administered in the U.S. is unattenuated, meaning it is not weakened in any way, and can actually cause illness and retarded growth. We think it's a bad idea to cause the baby chicks to endure the extra stress of cocci vaccinations, since shipping is already stressful on the babies. It's for that reason we don't offer a vaccination against coccidia. To offer extra protection against cocci, you can offer a medicated chick starter feed--this usually contains amprol, and helps chicks resist...