Best Hatchery for Chickens: Build Your Backyard Flock Now

When it comes to the best hatchery for chickens there are a handful of hatcheries that hit the mark. We have found our favorite but what is best for us may not be best for you.

What is the Best Hatchery for Chickens?

Lucky for us, there are some great hatcheries in the United States that carry the highest quality chicks. While most of them carry similar breeds of quality poultry, the prices, shipping, minimum orders, and availability are where the differences often come in.  

Hoover’s Hatchery

Hoover’s Hatchery has been in business since 1944 and is located in Rudd, Iowa.  They have a huge selection of baby chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, guineas, and Coturnix quail. They offer free shipping for 15 or more baby chicks.

Hoover’s has great prices across the board. I have found that they have great customer service and can often provide shipping dates faster than other hatcheries, making them one of my favorite chicken hatcheries to order from. 

Valley Farms Hatchery

Valley Farms Hatchery is located in Alabama and started out as a hobby in 2012. Ryan, who was about 13 at the time, started hatching a few eggs from the chickens his parents had bought him at a local feed store. This family-run NPIP Certified hatchery quickly grew from its beginnings. 

Their minimum order is 10 with a 90% sexing guarantee. They do have a slightly smaller selection to choose from but have great prices. My shipping costs for a minimum order was just under $15. I often order from them because they are in my region, which is faster and safer for the chicks.

Murray Mcmurray

In business since 1917, Murray McMurray is also located in Iowa. They have a huge selection of chicks, waterfowl, gamebirds, turkeys, and hatching eggs to choose from. For fun, you can even order the Fluent in Fowl Language T-shirt. 

McMurray is a favorite in the homesteading community. They have great prices and a 6-chick minimum order if you are willing to pay the $35 small order charge. McMurray also has a 14-chick minimum order with no fee. As a bonus, they also offer a free catalog (digital), and free shipping on FULL orders of day-old poultry.

Welp Hatchery

Welp Hatchery, located in Bancroft, Iowa, was established in 1929 by Joseph H Welp. They offer a wide variety of chicks to choose from with good prices and free shipping on all minimum orders of 25 baby chicks. 

Ideal Poultry

Ideal Poultry is located in Cameron, Texas. They have been a family-owned and run business since 1937. They currently hatch and sell 79 Standard Chicken Breeds, 58 Breeds of Bantams, 9 Breeds of Ducks, 3 Breeds of Geese, and 4 Breeds of Guineas. In addition, Ideal has available 9 Heritage Breeds of Turkeys, Ring Neck Pheasants, and Chukar. 

Ideal Poultry has a 90% sexing guarantee. They have great prices and a minimum order size of $40 but surcharges on every order ranging from $10-$20.00.

Meyer Hatchery

This woman-owned and operated hatchery is NPIP certified out of Polk, Ohio. They have a 48-hour livability guarantee after you receive your chicks.

Meyer Hatchery has a 100% sexing guarantee.  However, I did find that their prices tend to be higher than other hatcheries.  Their minimum order changes seasonally, being higher in the winter months.

Meyer Hatchery has the option of participating in one of two pretty cool programs. The Homestead Helper program ships a free rooster with your order for sustainability. The Meal Maker program ships a free hen with your order if you agree to donate the eggs or meat to a family in need. 

My Pet Chicken

My Pet Chicken is your one-stop shop for starting a backyard flock. With a good stock of day-old chicks to choose from, chicken coops & plans, starter poultry supplies, and educational materials, they have pretty much everything you’d need to start your flock.  Their minimum order changes seasonally, prices are decent, but shipping is pretty high on small orders. 

Stromberg’s

Any size flock owner can find what they need at Stromberg’s out of Minnesota. They have a huge selection of baby chicks, along with basic and professional poultry supplies for small farms.

You can find small incubators and meat bird processing equipment, like poultry knives, pluckers, and scalders. Stromberg’s has a sexed rate of 90% and super low minimum orders of three. They also have free shipping over $150. 

Cackle Hatchery

Cackle Hatchery is a 4th generation family-owned and operated hatchery. They offer over 230 varieties of poultry that are shipped directly from their facility in Missouri.  They also carry a pretty good stock of poultry supplies.

Cackle’s minimum order is only three but they do have a $20 small order fee. They do have a 90% sexing guarantee.

What Different Breeds Do They Sell?

Since they all carry a wide selection of common breeds like Rhode Island Red, Golden Buff, Easter Eggers, Black Sex Link, Golden Comet, Cornish Cross broilers, Production Red, Red Sex Link, and Buff Orpington, the choice may come down to more than breeds available.  

Some hatcheries even carry the more rare breeds like the Lavender Orpington, Olive Eggers, and the Ayam Cemani, which is an all-black rare breed of chicken from Indonesia. Be ready to break out the wallet for that one though!

Choosing the Best Hatchery for Chickens

As you can see, the fine print matters when choosing the best hatchery for chickens.  Often times I will put together a few identical orders with different hatcheries to compare what the final prices are after shipping. I also like to compare shipping dates. 

How to Choose the Best Hatchery For Chickens

The best hatchery for chickens may be different for you because of timing, location, purpose, minimum orders, and shipping charges. Let’s sort through each of these to help choose the best chicken hatchery for your homestead. 

The Best Hatchery for Chickens May Be the Closest One

This is where I got into trouble.  It was very early in the springtime and while it was starting to warm up here in sunny Florida, it was still cold up north. 

How Far Is the Hatchery From Your Homestead?

I made the mistake of ordering a pretty large amount of baby chicks from a northern hatchery.  By the time the box arrived in Florida at my local U.S. Post Office, the whole box of chicks was dead. It was just too cold for a trip that far. 

For that reason, I consider Valley Farms Hatchery to be the best hatchery for chickens when we order chicks in the colder months.  They are in Alabama and we are in Florida.  Happy, healthy chickens are often here in two days, making for a great experience. 

The Best Time to Buy Baby Chicks

Baby chicks are just harder to keep in the colder winter months. Depending on your setup and where you live, you may want to wait until it warms up a bit before bringing baby chicks home. 

What is the Purpose of the Chicks You Want?

Are you looking for breeding stock, high-production egg layers, white egg layers, or fancy egg layers? Or perhaps you are in the market for dual-purpose or meat-production chickens.  

All hatcheries have a slightly different selection of poultry available.  Some may have more fancy or dual-purpose breeds than others. 

Do You Want Sexed Baby Chicks?

While most hatcheries do offer sexed baby chicks on most poultry, you may find that certain breeds are only available as straight run.  This may be fine in some situations but not in others. 

What is Their Minimum Order?

If ordering only a few baby chicks is what you are after, it could get pricey ordering from a hatchery. You may end up needing to order more than you really want.  Going in on an order with a friend is a great way to save money and meet the minimum order requirements. 

You May Want To Consider What is Available Locally

When you only need a few baby chicks you may want to find local farm stores or feed stores that have chicks in stock.  They often have a smaller selection and prices are slightly higher but you skip the order and shipping charges. 

My Favorite Local Place to Buy Chicks

If you are local to Northeast Florida or even South Georgia you have to check out my favorite place, Charley’s Chicks.  They are a local chicken farm that carries multiple varieties of egg-laying chicks, from baby chicks to laying hens. Charley also carries meat chickens.

You can tour their little farm and shop for the best chickens to take home that day.  They have it all and are our local chicken experts, who happen to be amazing people as well.  Please look them up and visit them if you are in the Northeast Florida area. 

How Many Chicks Should I Order?

Once upon a time, Uncle Sam encouraged everyone to keep backyard chickens.  He recommended keeping two laying hens per person in the house to stay in fresh eggs.

Who I Consider to Be the Best Hatchery for Chickens

Time after time, we consider the best hatchery for chickens to be Hoover’s Hatchery and Valley Farms Hatchery.  Their prices and shipping charges usually come out about the same.  It’s the delivery date and even the time of year that is the deciding factor for me.

My Shipping Experience

Over the last eight years of ordering baby chicks, multiple times a year, I have generally had good experiences with Hoover’s Hatchery and Valley Farms Hatchery. Upon ordering baby chicks, a shipping date is selected.  I have had pretty good luck that they almost always ship out on that date. 

While it’s possible that it may vary by a day, it usually does not.  Within 2-3 days the baby chicks are at the post office ready for pickup.

My shipping problems happened in the colder months. Hindsight, I should have waited a few more weeks before ordering that batch of baby chicks. 

The Best Hatchery for Chickens

With several hatcheries in the running for the best hatchery for chickens, it may come down to your specific wants and needs. Be sure to read customer reviews to get an even more thorough look at the chicken hatcheries you are considering.  Good luck shopping for the right kind of chickens for your backyard flock.

Happy Homesteading & Baby Chick Shopping, 

Jenny @ The GrahamStead Family Farm

Jenny and her family have been homesteading for more than two decades. They currently live on a 10-acre farm in Northeast Florida, which they built from the ground up, nine years ago.

On their farm, they grow 100% of their meat and most of their vegetables. With a small herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, pastured poultry, sheep, and seasonal pigs, they not only meet their family’s meat needs but also sell their surplus to the local community. They are dedicated to sustainable practices like making compost, seed saving, and processing much of their garden and animal harvests at home. You can find Jenny wandering through her garden, making herbal tinctures, preserving food, making bone broth, and one of Jenny’s favorite hobbies, tanning all types of hides.