our experience buying pols

Dear all,

Just wanted to share our experience with you in the hope that it might help others.

We have had experience of chickens before - twice over the last 10 years, and have not had any trouble at all. The hens become part of our family, have names, are tame and we really love and appreciate the eggs.

After 3 years of no chickens, we decided to build a lovely place for them to be and get some more. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working on an enclosure for them at the bottom of the garden. The enclosure is the size of a small garden, and we converted a shed into the coop, with 2 nesting boxes. The plan was to keep the hens in the run which we believe (hope!) is fox proof and let them out in the garden when we are home and can keep an eye on them.

At the end of May we were ready to welcome 6 new additions to the family! And this is where we were naive. We searched on the internet for somewhere local where we could buy the chickens. Unfortunately where we live in Surrey, there was no-one local. After doing a few searches, and ringing a few places up to see what was available, we decided to take to trip to a place in Surrey, but still a good 50 min drive away. The website all looked good, and when I spoke to the supplier, he seemed to know what he was talking about.

We should probably have taken more note when we arrived at the suppliers. There was a chicken dying in one of the pens, and was dead 10 mins later. However, hundreds of other chickens seemed to be healthy and ok. He said he would have to find out what happened to the dead one.

We were so excited about getting our chickens that we didn't stop at this point and think. We chose 6 chickens which seemed fine and came home with us. They were all POLS although we now suspect they were younger than we were told they were. None have started laying, and only 1 is looking close with a comb starting to develop.

Well the very next day, and for the following 5 weeks I have spent a fortune at the vets. The very next day they were coughing, sneezing, 2 of them had eye infections. My guess is that whilst they were at the suppliers, they were dosed up with antibiotics and when they came home they went downhill rapidly with no medication in them to keep them looking ok.

The good news is 5 of the girls are now ok, and happy - although it took 4 weeks. Unfortunately we lost one, and we don't yet know why - the vet is doing a post mortem.

I did contact the supplier a couple of days after we bought them home, but he was quite cross I had got a vet involved and said we should have contacted him. Well, I guess we knew he'd either send us antibiotics in the post or exchange the birds. We did not want to wait, and anyway wanted professional care for them. We didn't want them exchanged - although we (hubby and 3 children) only had them for a couple of days at this point,we did choose them, we had given them names. We were not going to send them back  - they were ours and we wanted them to be ok. Maybe this is too emotional, but that's the way it was.

So, we are very disappointed that we are down to 5, but will hopefully give them a lovely life for the next few years.

We just wish we had taken more time to research the supplier, and see if anyone else had had any experience with him. We spent months, lots of time and energy getting everything just right for when we did have chickens, - we should have spent much more time researching the supplier instead of being impressed with his website and telephone manner.

Stella

There's always two sides to every story.
Chickens are living things and as such are liable to sickness and illness. If a creature has lived on a site all its life, then it may well have built up a resistance to the various bugs and diseases that are present. In taking birds to new premises, you may suddenly expose them to agents that they previously havent encountered and havent any built up immunity to.

All that purchasers can do in buying chickens from any source, is to  purchase the healthiet looking chickens that they can.

I don't sell chickens, but I thought I'd try and redress the balance a little by pointing out that if you have bad luck with your purchases, the blame can't always be laid at the vendors feet.

Hi

Understand what you are saying, but honestly they were so ill (chests rattling etc) that there is no way it was caused just by the stress of moving. There were definitely underlying conditions which manifested themselves. They needed antibiotics, injections, eye ointment, and needed to be fed by syringe, lots of time and TLC etc. We have bought chickens before and understand that moving can be stressful......but it cannot be right that 6 different chickens all become so ill within 16 hours of getting to us that they were at deaths door.

They had to be syringe fed/watered every 4 hours. It has been a labour of love the last few weeks to keep them alive and I cannot believe (and neither does the vet believe) that they were healthy when we bought them.

Anyway, the point I am really trying to make is that people should really do their supplier homework first before buying, check out the supplier, and ideally speak to people who have used the supplier before.

Stella

Yes there are 2 sides to every story, but this one sounds familiar to me!!!

We got our 12 POL's last august from a lady about 16 miles away.  Luckily they were good and we ddin't lose any,although one didn't start to lay until March, but we also think tey were not POL when we got them.  They didn't start to lay until 2 months after we got them.

A few weeks ago, I had a call from a young man who had bought 20 of our Babocks as 9 week old chicks.  He said Have you had any dealings with R*****, yes I said that's where we got our POL's from last year, why? Well he said, I got 40 from her just over a week ago and 9 of them are dead, plus one of your chicks and 1 of my own chicks. the vet said it is an internal parasite caused by overcrowding and rigor mortis is almost instant as soon as the bird dies.  

He called her to tell her to check her flock, and she was really rude to him on the phone and said there's nthing wrong with her birds, its probably the others!  But it was her birds that started to die first!  Well he called me again lat night and although he segregated her birds from the others, whatever it is, has spread, and he's now lost 16 of her birds, 3 of ours and 3 of his own!  He called DEFRA to report it, but they weren't interested, so Brian told him to send the last body to Cambridge to get it tested.

She told us that she rears the chicks from day old, but our friend was so suspicious,he actually got a friend to watch the place from up the road, and he told him that in the late evening, a 4x4 with a trailer load of crates pulled up at her place and unloaded all these crates of chickens and went away!!!!  So I don't know where she gets them from, but it doesn't look like she rears them herself.  When we bought ours lastyear they were in her back garden in a summerhouse with a bit of very low fencing around it, and no food or water or anything.  She said she gets them in from the field at the back.  But she did the same with our friend and he bought 40, and they were all in this summerhouse too!!!!

People like that, give people like me a bad name.  I had recommended her to several people and I tried to get in touch with her because 2 people wanted a LOT of chickens (500 in total) but I think she knows I rear my own now and she won't answer the phone to me.  But I couldn't recommend her to anyone now could I?  Stupid woman!!!!!!

I'm so sorry you've had a similar experience Stella!!!!

:cry:

Thats so sad

 :cry: