Buying Hatchig Eggs - be careful !!!

[pekinclub]

Dear Friends,
I am sure that many of you are poultry breeders.
I wanted to let you know the true about a breeder called Paula .be aware if you ever see the name.
I got eggs from her 6 months ago, some "chocolate pekins" , some "chocolate orpingtons bantam" and some "chocolate orpingtons" bantam. After hatching and raising the chicks for 6 months I found that:
The LF orpingtons are not LF, she is probably using bantam male that reduce the size of all chicks. They are not pure chocolate, and by surprise have golden neck which is discoloration that will be carried over into the next generation. The pekin chocolate turned out to be one of the ugliest chickens I ever seen, he is probably a mix of pekin and orpington. Not enough feathers on his legs, so he is not pekin and not orpington. The color is black, but again, brown neck …. I made my homework, asking some other breeders about her, and I found out that she cheated on many people before.
After writing her and asking for my money back , I gave her one week to do it before establishing this group. She finally answered me:
“i have no idea what you are talking about i have never sold duff eggs to anyone ever what a load of rubbish and if you all done your homework it somehow could be a genetic throw back that i can’t predict this sort of thing does happen unfortunately i don’t like threats of any kind as i have done nothing wrong”
So that’s what I think:
To be completely honest the ‘genetic throwback’ is a load of rubbish, Paula claims to have ‘the crème de la crème’ Pure Breed Large Fowl Chocolate Cockerels treading Pure Breed Large Fowl Chocolate Hens, if this were true and these and they are of the quality she states there would not be any ‘throwbacks’, everything hatched would be Pure Chocolate, no discoloration around the neck feathers or size differences.
Please take a look at the “pure chocolate” orpington and tell me what you think please

***recent news*** I finally breed chocolate hen and chocolate roo and all chicks are black (10 already). another chocolate male is with black hen and again ... all chicks are black - it means that the roos are not carry the choc gen ...

post edited to remove name : Foxy

 

[chrismahon]

Hi Pekinclub. Sorry you had such a bad experience with hatching eggs. We had similar with buff orpingtons from P & T poultry -I just won't buy hatching eggs again unless I have seen the parents and the conditions they are in. I've been told by a very experienced breeder that the size of the offspring is determined by the size of the mother usually and the colouring comes from the father usually -you do get the odd throwback. Your 'show quality' Orpingtons are the wrong shape for current standards. They are the old 1900's shape. The new ones are much heavier in the breast, shorter in the leg, shorter neck although the tail looks right. An expert in Orpingtons will tell you more. I can't tell you about the colouring as we don't have any Chocolate Orps.

 

[pekinclub]

Hi,
I totally agree with you. as you know , I am from Israel and I didn't have the chance to see the parents....
I know that they ain't got the right shape. we do have buff orpingtons LF in Israel from a good bloodline and they are very different.
I posted this post so people will be careful. when I got the eggs Paula had 100% positive feedback on E-bay so I thought that she is o.k.
never mind .... next time I will buy only from breeders that I know from facebook personally.

kind regards
Pekin Club Israel

 

[cuwiar]

The pekin chocolate turned out to be one of the ugliest chickens I ever seen,

He doesn't look ugly to me, he looks cute!

...but I'm not an expert, a breeder or a shower...I just like chickens! 17

 

[Tim]

It's easy to have an unwanted cock get into a pen and cause some unusual results in the offspring - but the better breeders will make sure they can't get in and if they do, they with-hold eggs for 4 weeks to make sure the offspring are true.

Ebay is a lottery.... that's for sure. I've had some fantastic results ... and some terrible results... sorry to hear you had such bad results.

One tip - if the birds look really good, run a search on Google Images for the breed and flick through the first couple of pages - if you spot the same image.... you can see the site it came from and decide whether the seller is genuine.

 

[Tim]

By the way - the Show Quality Choc Orps look like a cross between Gold Laced Orpingtons and Choc (it the breast colour is chocolate)...

 

[tygrysek75]

Sorry to hear this there bad sellers and good sellers on E-bay.There are topicks of theese on the forum.You may would like to add this person to our bad sellers list.

 

[Chuck]

Tim sums it up very well.

More often than not, it's ignorance, not badness when things go wrong. Some people who I won't call breeders just don't understand the principles of breeding for egg laying, colour type etc. It seems to me that people buy eggs one year and start selling them the next from birds they've hatched with as I said, no knowledge of what's reqired.

I had some fun on e Bay some four years ago and found results varied from excellent to disastrous. First thing I looked at was shell quality and about a quarter had shells that I wouldn't set myself and wouldn't sell to anyone else. Fertility from none to 100%. In the end, I used 'ask seller a question' a lot and managed to suss out a few duds with a few pertinent questions.

Funny how chocolate seems to be such a desirable colour as I find it asolutely drab but each to his own.

 

[Marigold]

Funny how chocolate seems to be such a desirable colour as I find it asolutely drab but each to his own.

i suppose these things go in fashions - they certainly do in garden design. A few years ago Chocolate Cosmos was all the rage, interesting but drab, as you say, Chuck. Then it was Verbena Bonariensis. In dog breeding, some breeds go in and out of fashion, often with disasterous consequences for the breed concerned as poor breeders jump on the bandwagon. Eg the fallout after the film 1,001 Dalmatians, where indiscriminate breeding of a breed designed to need masses of exercise following horse-drawn carriages was sold to people who just liked spotty pups, so that many ended up in rescue or worse.
I thought the chocolate birds were greatly improved by having some golden feathers, much more interesting and attractive, kind of a reverse version of Marigold on the right there. But I think that, just as with dog breeding, when a chicken is judged only on its conformation to some arbitrary standard of appearance, something has gone wrong somewhere. Like Katy-may, I thought the 'ugliest chicken I've ever seen' was very pretty and interesting and I'd have just liked to know if it laid well and was healthy!

 

[foxy]

I have edited the original post to remove the sellers actual name. Whilst I have absolutely no doubt there are many sellers of hatching eggs out there that may knowingly sell eggs that are not true to their description,or even their own photographs being used to advertise their hatching eggs. Chuck has also made a very good point, they may be doing so in ignorance lacking the knowledge of the strain, background and genetics to be able to substantiate their claim.

I think the onus is on ourselves to ask as many questions as possible, indeed if possible collect the eggs in person so the standards of stock and husbandry can be observed, however still at the end of the day it still can be a lottery!

With hatching eggs it is indeed a case of "buyer beware!" 05

 

[pekinclub]

Funny how chocolate seems to be such a desirable colour as I find it asolutely drab but each to his own.

i suppose these things go in fashions - they certainly do in garden design. A few years ago Chocolate Cosmos was all the rage, interesting but drab, as you say, Chuck. Then it was Verbena Bonariensis. In dog breeding, some breeds go in and out of fashion, often with disasterous consequences for the breed concerned as poor breeders jump on the bandwagon. Eg the fallout after the film 1,001 Dalmatians, where indiscriminate breeding of a breed designed to need masses of exercise following horse-drawn carriages was sold to people who just liked spotty pups, so that many ended up in rescue or worse.
I thought the chocolate birds were greatly improved by having some golden feathers, much more interesting and attractive, kind of a reverse version of Marigold on the right there. But I think that, just as with dog breeding, when a chicken is judged only on its conformation to some arbitrary standard of appearance, something has gone wrong somewhere. Like Katy-may, I thought the 'ugliest chicken I've ever seen' was very pretty and interesting and I'd have just liked to know if it laid well and was healthy!

Hi,
sorry for the missunderstanding , but when I mean ugliest , I am thinking in compare to what I realy want to buy and paid for - choclate pekin !
I didn't pay such amount of money for hybrids. I have nothing against hybrids , I have 4 beautiful hybrids hens , healthy and strong & laying well , but understand my frastration whan I grow the chick and find out that it is hybrid ...

best
Itay

 

[AlexArt]

I think it's a case of buyer beware with hatching eggs anyway, I've had a few good results from ebay eggs - this year I bought half a dozen turkey eggs and 3 hatched, last year I bought 6 ancona ones and all 6 hatched, but I have had alot more disasters - one year I bought about 60 eggs of various breeds and only 4 hatched from one seller!! My neighbor has bought eggs from poultry auctions - once she got 12 vorwerk eggs and 3 hatched - 2 white with various splodges and one brown one!!!11 And the 24 maran eggs she bought for £28 were all old eggs and totally duff!!
I did see those chocolate orp eggs on ebay when they had just come out and were going for hundreds for just half a dozen - I hate to think how cheesed off I would be if they didn't hatch!!!! 02
I tend now to buy the adult/young birds from breeders so I can see the parents, sometimes auctions too, and breed my own. Having said that I saw some beautiful looking marans at an auction a few months ago - and one had laid an egg - a very pale cream egg - needless to say they didn't fetch much money - but if they hadn't laid that egg someone would have parted with a good bit of money for them and been pretty dissapointed - so it can be hit and miss there too!!! :roll: