Comments regarding My Pet Chicken

Deceptive billing practices. Charges $5 for any change. Did not warn me about the charge.

I've ordered chicks twice from my pet chicken. This was in the spring of 2012. I ordered 8 and 5 arrived dead. Someone didn't tape down the heat back inside the box. So, it banged around killing the chicks during the shipment. I got 5 replacements 2 months later when the same breed was available again. Guess what they sent me all roosters! I had specified all females. I gave up on ordering chicks with them. Anyone with a dead on arrival or arriving and dying later should look for a LOCAL hatchery near your home where you can pick out your chicks AND get them home safely.

#2 I ordered the TEAL colored egg boxes (paper pulp) recently- July 2014. They sent me these really ugly color SLATE BLUE color boxes. I had designed and printed labels to coordinate with the "Teal" color. It was a BIG pain in the ass getting replacements. They didn't have the Teal, but they didn't have pink, green or any other pastel shade either! So I got the flat top ordinary color boxes. They wouldn't give me an RA with the shipping paid for. I had to pay 11.00 for shipping. I won't be ordering egg boxes from them again.

So, I won't be ordering chicks OR egg boxes from MPC!

#3 I got one of those "No Crow" collars. It arrived with NO instructions. I had to go to the website for them. Well, my roo pulled the darn thing off. He got his toe caught in it -pulling it up to his head. He was nearly choking. I had the collar on him all that day. Good thing he was roosting inside my house so I could watch out for him. The instructions say to adjust it loosly till the roo gets used to it. All day he was pulling at it and annoyed by it. The 2nd day I tightened it but he made such a fuss scratching at it with his foot that I removed it after a few hours. Maybe this thing "works" under certain circumstances.
WARNING- IF YOU BUY THIS THING WATCH YOUR ROO CONSTANTLY! He could very easily die trying to get it off especially if he manages to get his foot hooked into the stupid thing and falls over. DO NOT let him wander off out of your observation area. If you see that he just doesn't get used to the thing and tries to pull it off. TAKE it off before he chokes himself to death. Remove the collar at night. This collar has MESH on it and a toenail can easily get caught. The bird will panic. Maybe fall down. And maybe pull it up to his head and choke. This is a brand new product that just came out last week. P.S. You can probably make your own No-Crow collar for less than the 17 bucks they cost. It needs to have a break-free emergency. Maybe some roosters wouldn't be bothered by it- mine wasn't one. 2 of my friends bought it. Maybe I'll report their experiences later.

I ordered 15 dorkings in Decmeber. The day they were to ship, I got a call saying they didn't have my order ready. That "my" dorkings didn't hatch. So after some run around I find out that 2 hens and 4 roosters are available. The woman tells me that there is no waiting list, so if the ones that were slated for my shipment do not hatch, but the batch the next day do, I am just out of luck, those go to the next person. So I ask that what they have be sent and I substitute the rest with 6 other layers. The woman on the phone says certain subs are available, even though the website says something else. She calls the hatchery and finds out that yes, the ones I want are available. At this point I am already very unhappy with MPC.
The chicks arrive and the Dorkings are weak, small, and can hardly stand. The other 6 are fine. As I always do, I give them sugar water and check on them every 30 minutes. Within the first 24 hours 2 Dorkings are dead. The next day the third one dies. So out of 6 Dorking, 3 are dead. When I call MPC, I am told to give sugar water and make sure the temp is correct. I have 2 thermometers going to be sure of the temp. I think the ones I received were the runts of the hatch that they just shipped them even though they were in bad shape. They said it was "stress", but they seemed to have something neurologically wrong with them. They couldn't stand well and tipped forward when they tried to move and would shake like they had Parkinson's.
After repeated calls, they offered to refund the cost of the chicks, not the shipping. I am still trying to get a refund for the diffence in the original order and the changed one...a month later!
It's not that anyone was rude, just that no one seemed to have follow through. And it was very, very hard to get anyone on the phone.
Because of the poor quality of the chicks, the lack of a waiting list, and the extra time it has taken to resolve all the problems, I will never order from here again. With the hatchery for my meat birds, if I have a big loss for no reason, they refund the cost of the chicks and shipping. And I have never had more than a 4-6% loss with our chicks. Even ones shipped in the heat of the summer. A 25% loss is not acceptable.

My experience with this company was a nightmare.

In 2011, I ordered ten Silkie bantams. All arrived alive but the colors were sorted completely wrong. If they can't sort Silkies by color I don't understand why they offer that choice on their website.

Only three made it to their first birthday, and that doesn't involve predators. They just kept dropping dead on me. Vet couldn't find anything wrong with them, and none of the symptoms fit any of the typical poultry diseases. They were my first chickens and lived in a brand new coop. The symptoms were: hen is healthy and active, then hen drops dead in coop without a mark, rest of flock unaffected. They were penned and did not have access to mushrooms or any poisons.

In late 2011, pre-ordered several rare breeds at midnight on December 1, because I wanted to be sure I got some of the ones that sell out quickly (marans, especially). My order was slated for arrival in late March. I was looking forward to having a large flock of chickens again.

Well, all fifteen arrived dead. And not freshly dead, either. It was heartbreaking. Both my post lady and myself were crying. It was the first time I had ever picked up a box of dead birds.

I tried to arrange for a replacement shipment but of course, it being March, they were sold out of almost everything. The woman on the phone was very unhelpful. I settled for a "exotic assortment." MPC did refund the cost of the dead chicks but I had to call back and specifically request that my original shipping cost be refunded as well (it states on the website that this is policy, but it was not offered to me until I pointed that out).

My exotic assortment arrived 14/15 alive, but over the next five days I lost five more chicks. Their Salmon Faverolles especially seem to be very weak. They were not pasting up or acting strange at all. They would be running around with the other chicks and then be dead in the morning.

Trying to figure out what was included in the assortment was maddening. Many of the breeds I got were not listed as possibilities on the website. I lost a lot of my hens just before they reached POL (point of lay) to the same mystery problems that plagued my Silkies (see above), meaning that they just dropped dead.

The exotic assortment is not something I would recommend because they are about as tame as wild pheasants, and it makes doing any maintenance in/around the coop very unpleasant because they panic very, very easily. I can understand why they are unpopular/rare breeds.

I will not order from MPC again. I am not sure what is going on with their birds but the birds I have from breeders and other hatcheries thrive while I have exactly one MPC bird left out of my 2011 order of 10, and three MPC birds left out of my 2012 order of 15. I hardly got eggs out of any of them and it really feels like I just threw my money away.

Posted on March 15, 2013, updated March 19, 2013
I ordered 10 asst. silkies and 5 mille fleur but ordered them for the wrong date, i called and had to change the date and change my order to 15 asst. featherfooted bantams which I didnt have a problem with since i was getting great customer service and dealing with very friendly people. I did lose 5 of the chicks, 3 came dead and 2 died within the next two days. I left a message last night and was called this morning and had the losses credited to my card. I would have this review as positive just because of the great customer service I recieved but the shipping is what didnt sit right. After paying $30 ish for shipping express mail, it was disapointing watching them arrive in Fargo at 10 am and sit there untill 1 am the next day. With my order from murray mcmurray they were sent priority mail and arrived in the same amount of time. So my main complaint is with the postal service rather than My Pet Chicken. Great Customer service tho. I do believe some of the blame is on myself for ordering 15 bantams when it is still rather early in the year. Will update in the future.

24 Assorted Orpington Hatching Eggs sent 3 weeks after my original ship date. I received shipping email AFTER I had already received my eggs. All Blue/Splash were true infertiles (did a breakout analysis of clear eggs), all Lavender were rotten with already forming embryos. The air cells were rather large, indicating they weren't fresh (only took 24 hours once shipped). Only 5 Buff Orpingtons hatched -one with abnormal toes, one with deformed wings, and all abnormally huge. I'm not kidding. There really were this many issues. There were obvious infertility and other genetic issues. I emailed the company twice with no response. I do know how to hatch eggs and am very knowledgable on fertility, egg structure, etc, as I have hatched many shipped eggs, so this is not a review based out of ignorance. It has nothing to do with the PO, but has everything to do with sending out a defective product from a breeder/hatchery with flock management issues.

Ordered 2 Black Copper Marans May 2012 with an assortment of other breeds. They both died one within a day the other 2 days later. All the other breeds survived to adulthood. I think it was a weak batch. I have received 2 other chicks in the past with deformities that were not as noticeable until they were feathering out. I spoke to them about the 2 copper m's that died and they only offered to replace one, but not the shipping.

We ordered 10 day-old chicks and even though they arrived the day after shipping and we picked them up at the post office before noon, three were D.O.A. and another clearly-weak chick died within 48 hours. We then lost another (No. 5) 4 days after arrival. Because the 5th (making 50% dead) died outside their 48-hour window, we are getting no refund on our shipping ($37) and if we reorder with My Pet Chicken it will push our total to over $150 in an attempt to receive 10 healthy chicks.

Bought hatching eggs throught the company and had the worst hatching ratio I have ever had out of 24 eggs only 9 hatched.

MPC claim they sent two email instructions of care before chicks arrived. No proof offered. No bill of lading nor care instructions with early March 2011 shipment out of Ohio. Within the 48-hour guarantee I emailed MPC that 4 chicks were dead and one dying. Their response was feeding instructions. By the next day 17 chicks were dead. I sent them another email. MPC response was I wasn't keeping them warm enough. (Of course they didn't get cold coming out of Ohio.) Next response from a third person was that I should have been more responsible when adopting pets and out of the thousands of customers they only have one or two dead-chicks complaints a year. These chicks were never bought to be pets. MPC graciously refunded $13 for the original 4-5 dead chicks.