NATURE'S HATCHERY
Shipping Nationwide
The United States Postal Service has successfully delivered Billions of day-old poultry to farmer's doorstep for years: It is the only national U.S. mail carrier to do so at present. However, they are currently having a hard time with finances and will be closing many postal locations. This may disrupt the predicted delivery time of your chicks. Sizable orders of chicks, ducks and geese (15-25+ birds) do very well in shipping and can often handle the extra time in transit.
We recommend the following for orders containing birds that are more fragile their first week or so, such as muscovy ducks, call ducks, small bantams, and orders of less than 15-20 birds.
What you can do:
- If you are concerned about your chicks arriving in poor condition, You can request special handling. We charge $10.00 for this service, the Post Office will take extra care of your birds if you purchase it. They will load your package on the truck last so it will be the first thing unloaded, and they will put it in a special carton that is marked.
-OR-
- You can request Express shipping. Usually this will get your package to your door either the day after shipping, or the second day. On occasion we hear of express mail being late, though. This will not usually harm the birds. Express mail is especially recommended if you live in an area marked red in the map below.
The post office we ship from has a great staff and they are extremely careful with the boxes, even to the extent of building a heated dock just for the poultry. So you need not worry, your Illinois postmasters and postal workers do their very best to ensure safe arrival. We are also experimenting with eye-catching "rush" labels to see if they help your local postal centers deliver chicks to your doorstep faster and in better condition.
Overall, the percentage of shipments that do not go well are very rare and usually confined to certain geographical areas. We have created a shipping map of the certain states that sometimes give us delayed delivery. For these states (highlighted in RED, we highly recommend that you request overnight express shipping for your order. for the states and areas highlighted in ORANGE, we recommend adding either express delivery or special handling to ensure safe arrival. The areas highlighted in green should have no problems with delivery.
Requesting these services for your order is almost like a guarantee your order will be uneventful!
U.S. map of shipping arrival times:
