What's Going on with the Chick Shortage?

With concern over the Avian Influenza epidemic and the rising cost of eggs, we had the sense early on that 2025 was going to be a busy year for those of us in the "chicken business." What started out as a hopeful and exciting chick season has devolved into a frustrating, stressful slog that we were sadly unprepared for.

Here at Dragon Way Farm, I believe very strongly in truth and transparency, and I do my very best to strive for excellent customer service. It is with those values in mind that I am writing this blog post to give all of my loyal customers an inside view of what we're dealing with this chick season. Spoiler alert: we're running behind schedule on orders. I want to make sure that customer service is still satisfactory, so I want everyone to know the challenges we are facing, what our plan is to address those challenges, and to keep everyone on the same page so that our customers can make the best decisions going forward.

A Brief History

Dragon Way Farm is currently only in it's 3rd chick season. We began our very first year in the summer of 2023 by over-ordering chicks from a hatchery that were a breed that was hard to find in our area and selling the excess. It turned out that we had found an unexpected need in our chicken keeping community and were encouraged to hatch some of our own the following year as well as continue to sell hatchery excess.

Taking feedback from our first year in business, we found that selling hatchery chicks that were already vent sexed allowed us to sell a greater variety of breeds that customers were asking for as well as allowing us to offer a "rooster free guarantee". We continued to also hatch out our own chicks, perfecting the incubating method. This business model worked out well for us in 2024 and our little business has grown steadily.

What is Up with 2025?

Toward the end of 2024, all of the talk about the Avian Influenza alerted us to the fact that 2025 was going to be a slightly different year. Several large, commercial hatcheries were affected by the Bird Flu and had to cull flocks. We knew that this would result in shortages come chick season in early spring. We placed early orders with two hatcheries that we have always dealt with and we invested in multiple new incubators. We were prepared. Or so we thought...

Cold, stormy weather in February led to two of our chick shipments getting delayed by a few weeks. We were not the only ones. Tractor Supply, a big supplier of chicks in the area had their start to "Chick Days" delayed by two weeks due to hatcheries delaying shipments with weather cited as the reason.

Then we read a headline about a hatchery that delayed shipments of orders due to unexpectedly poor hatch rates. Sadly, we experienced the same on our first hatch of the season in early March with less than 50% of the eggs incubated hatching. We know it's not an incubator failure: we also incubated duck eggs and had excellent results. It was the chicken eggs that failed to hatch.

In early March we had a shipment of chicks coming from one of our favorite hatcheries that we've dealt with many, many times. In the past, we've never had any issues and all the chicks we've received from this hatchery always arrived very vibrant and healthy. This was a shipment that was 100% pre-orders, several different breeds. We opened the box to just 5 live chicks out of dozens. While this is not the first time we've ever experienced losses when dealing with chicks shipped from hatcheries via the USPS, this was the first loss we've dealt with from this particular hatchery and was by far the most devastating loss we've suffered yet.

Unfortunately, when we contacted the hatchery to file our complaint, we were informed that there would be no re-shipments this year due to a $15 surcharge that the USPS was adding this year to all live poultry orders. While we would have gladly paid the extra money to get the chicks, we were not given the option. We are still waiting for our refund....

If you pre-ordered Lavender Orpingtons, Speckled Sussex, or Red Laced Blue Wyandotte's early this year and have yet to receive your chicks or an alert from us saying that your chicks have hatched, this is why. Your chicks were on that order that arrived deceased, and we were not able to secure a re-shipment. We immediately tried to order more chicks from another hatchery to no avail, but we have not stopped trying. We have also secured and incubated hatching eggs, both locally and from Ebay, but hatch rates have been less than ideal with sometimes 2-3 chicks out of two dozen hatching for some breeds.

This has been incredibly frustrating for us here at the farm, and I know my wonderful customers who have yet to receive chicks they were expecting are also very frustrated. For that, I sincerely apologize.

What's the Plan?

We have not given up trying to fill orders. We are doing our best to source live chicks (which is proving very difficult as there seems to be a legit shortage everywhere). We did have one source of luck in that we found a local breeder who specializes in Buff Orpingtons and Barred Plymouth Rocks! Barred Rocks were, in previous years, difficult for us to get our hands on and now we have an almost limitless supply. The only catch is that we can only purchase straight run chicks, meaning we won't know the sex until they are off heat.

We are also finding more local sources for hatching eggs and we have been hatching weekly (almost every Monday we have something hatching out) with limited success. Some of our hatches (mostly our barnyard mix) are going very well, while many of our pure breed hatches are less than ideal (we just hatched 3 Delaware chicks out of 24 eggs). Unfortunately, we cannot vent sex here at the farm, so again, we won't know the sex until these chicks come off heat in 6-8 weeks.

The plan moving forward for May and the rest of the summer is to continue to hatch as many chicks as we can each week. Since they had the best hatch rates, we will be focusing more on our barnyard mixes. Please keep in mind that our barnyard mixes are technically just a form of production hybrid (like what you could order from a hatchery), just without a fancy name and we may not know exactly what two breeds went into the mix. However, our free range flock (which our mix comes from) is comprised of mostly heritage pure breeds. These are commonly used in production crosses in commercial hatcheries and often result in more productive layers or bigger meat birds due to hybrid vigor.

Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Brown Leghorn, White Leghorn, Black Australorp, Jersey Giant and Red Laced Blue Wyandotte roosters are mixing with purebreed hens of those breeds as well as Buff and Lavender Orpington and Speckled Sussex hens. Barnyard mix chicks will be a mix of purebreed chicks (we just might not know what breed until they fully feather out), and a dealer's choice of hybrids resulting in colorful birds that should all be very productive layers as both parent lines are high producing.

We will also continue to replenish stock of Barred Rocks and Buff Orpingtons from our local source every two weeks (as available). Our hope is that by the end of May we will have off heat pullets ready to go every two weeks. In addition, we will continue to scan the availability of our trusted hatcheries and will jump on any opportunity to replenish the stock we lost in that failed shipment in March.

What Can You Do?

I would like to encourage everyone who is waiting on chicks to really think about how important the breed of the chicken is to you. While both the Red Laced Blue Wyandotte's and Speckled Sussex are beautiful and friendly birds, fertility and hatch rates are rather low with these breeds this year. If your main goal is a family friendly bird that is a good layer, perhaps consider a substitution of a Buff Orpington which will lay the same size and color egg, is roughly the same size bird, has a comparable temperament and is more available this year. Or consider one of our barnyard mix birds for a colorful feather pattern and excellent egg production.

If you are in a hurry to get chicks in your brooder, consider taking on some of our straight run chicks, whether the Barred Rocks, Buff Orpingtons, Barnyard mix, or Rhode Island Reds and Speckled Sussex that are supposed to hatch this month (fingers crossed for a good hatch!). While we obviously cannot guarantee no roosters on a straight run order, we will happily take back any roosters that you may get with your order so you don't have to worry about re-homing them. If we have replacement pullets available, we will be happy to swap them out for the roosters to make up for the inconvenience of this crazy year.

If you do choose to be flexible on breed (and age in some cases), we will certainly refund any differences owed. For example: Our barnyard mix straight run is $5 per chick (day old to off heat), while our pure breeds are $8. Swap the breed and you will get the cash refund at the time of pick-up.

And lastly, if you are committed to sticking with what you ordered, I just ask for your patience. As you can see, it's been a difficult season already and we're really still in the beginning! We are doing everything in our power to get everyone the chicks and chickens that they want, but we are also dealing with nature and often we don't know why eggs fail to hatch, and we cannot control the sex of the chick that comes out of the egg. I know that with egg prices and threats of egg shortages and the like, a type of panic sometimes sets in and we get restless to just get started and nervous that we will run out of time to start producing our own food. Chickens will take between 5 and 7 months to lay their first egg. If you are experiencing egg insecurity while you wait for your chicks, or while you wait for your chickens to begin laying, we do sell eating eggs for $5 per dozen ($4 p/dozen if you bring an empty carton). We do not have an unlimited supply of eating eggs, but feel free to reach out if you need a source of affordable eggs while you wait for your own flock to begin producing.

I sincerely hope this little update helps everyone understand the insanity of this current chick season. While this is incredibly fun and fulfilling work that we do here on the farm, this season has been rather overwhelming with all of the challenges that have so far been completely out of our control. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to email, message us on FB, call or text! Just be aware that we are pretty busy at the moment, so definitely leave messages and we will get back to you just as soon as we can (it's just not always instant right now). If you would like to discuss swapping breeds but have questions, or just want a personal update on your order, the best days to either meet me in person at the farm or talk on the phone are Sundays and Mondays as I'm off from my day job then and am at the farm all day both days.

Thank you so much for your patience and support!