Chicks and Hatching Eggs FAQs + Terms
Can your chicks be sexed at hatch?
No, our chicks cannot be sexed male or female at hatch. They are sold straight run, meaning there is a 50% chance of them being male or female. As you gain more experience, you will be able to start identifying which chicks are males vs females after a few weeks, but typically between 6-8 weeks it becomes pretty clear.
Need some guidance? Check out an article all about telling pullets and young cockerels apart by clicking HERE.
When will chicks and eggs be available?
Our season usually runs from February through July, at the discretion of how well our birds are producing and how our first test hatches turn out. Updates will be made on Instagram, the Facebook farm page, and here on the website as we approach each season.
*2023 season: as of February, the season is open and we still have limited availability for hatching eggs throughout each month. Chick reservations are SOLD OUT*
How do I order chicks and/or eggs?
The best way to order chicks right now is by emailing us. This allows us to keep close tabs on our reservation list and ensure nobody gets forgotten! Feel free to email us, DM us on Instagram or Facebook if you have questions before purchasing. Sometimes we will have flash sales over on Facebook or Instagram as we have extras available, and in that case, it is a first come first served basis, pending payment to Venmo or cash in certain instances.
A deposit is required in order to reserve chicks and hatching eggs. It can be any amount you are comfortable with, typically ranging from $10 to half of your total. Have a timeframe in mind on when you’d like to receive your chicks/eggs, and we will do our best to accommodate you in the order in which we received orders. Flexibility on your end is important when working with these live animals, since we cannot perfectly predict egg production or hatch rates. Though we can get pretty close based on previous season’s information and notes! 🙂
How many chicks/hatching eggs should I order?
Since your chicks are coming to you straight run, we recommend ordering twice as many as the layers you want to end up with. For example, if you are hoping to end up with 6 females, we recommend ordering 12 chicks, knowing that statistically speaking, half of them will likely be males. Though, we have had a customer come back and tell us that they got a miraculous 100% female ratio one time! On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve had hatches turn out to be 9 males to 1 female before, so just know that it is out of everyone’s control.
What breeds of chicks do you have?
We offer a fun lineup of breeds here on Forrest Farm, and have hand-selected the individuals in each of our breeding groups due to their beautiful eggs, feathers and temperaments, as well as breed standards for body conformation and structure. As of April 2023, we offer the following breeds:
Lavender Orpington *2023 sold out
Silverudd’s Blue/Isbar
“Rainbow Flock” – which includes a variety of the above mentioned breeds as well as others who will result in fabulously feathered and beautiful egg laying offspring for you! As of 2023, these are the following breeds found in our rainbow flock:
- moss egger
- French black copper maran
- spearmint egger
- heavy bloom olive egger
- salmon favorelle
- Swedish flower hen
- heritage welsummer
- appenzeller spitzhauben
- silverudd’s blue/isbar
- fibromelanistic lavender easter egger
How much do they cost?
Please see our price sheet below:
How do I successfully hatch my chicken eggs?
Lucky for you, we have an in-depth hatching guide! Check it out below:
Guide to Hatching Chicken Eggs: Achieve the BEST Hatch! https://beccagrowsstuff.com/hatching-chicken-eggs/
What incubator do you recommend?
We personally use two different incubators to hatch chicks here on our farm. Our trusty go-to is the Incuview All-in-One. The other that we love and bought a second of is a Farm Innovators 4250 with the chicken egg turners. We also have the quail egg turners for this one.
How does pickup work for my chicks/hatching eggs?
As hatch day approaches for your chicks that you have reserved, we will typically ask that you pick your chicks up on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning. We try to schedule our hatches to fall on Thursdays, so that any late hatchers will arrive earth-side by the pickup dates. The chicks will typically be less than a week old at pickup, more often than not they will be only a day or two old. The perfect opportunity to imprint on them with your family! When picking up your chicks, please plan on bringing a small box, just large enough to carry them home. Pickup will not occur on our farm due to biosecurity reasons, but instead, our designated pickup location is at the OTIS ORCHARDS, WA library. You can find the address below:
Pickup for hatching eggs will occur at the same location, and can be throughout the week as the eggs become available. We work at the pace of our hens, so we will take your reservation for either “the first half of the month” or “the last half of the month” and will reach out when we start gathering for you.
Do you sell any adult female or male chickens?
In the beginning of each season, around January and February, we take inventory of our flock in regards to male to female ratios, temperament, overall health and body confirmation. At that point, we might have some extra males (or rarely, females) that do not make the cut for breeding but will make good backyard pets. We will not have any extra adults again until the end of the season, usually in August or later. We will often just post them as we have them available on our farm page on Facebook, so be sure to follow along there for the most up-to-date availability.
Do you give a refund if one of my chicks dies/some eggs do not hatch?
Due to the vast amount of factors that are out of our hands once the chicks and eggs pass from our hands to yours, we do NOT offer refunds if a chick perishes or if some of your eggs do not hatch. Handling of the eggs from pickup to home, temperature fluctuations in your incubator, brooder conditions, etc. there is so much out of our control. We are always happy to troubleshoot issues with you, but by purchasing live eggs and chicks, you are agreeing to the fact that there is risk involved in regards to outcomes.
On our end, we do weekly fertility checks on our eggs from our breeding flocks. This means that we crack open an egg from each hen in our program and look for the “bullseye” that confirms that her egg is fertilized. If there are any hens that do not have a clear bullseye, her eggs are pulled from the breeding flock until she starts showing bullseyes again. Check out our guides about hatching chicken eggs, quail eggs, brooding quail and brooding chicks for our best advice!
What do you feed your chickens?
We feed our chickens a locally grown and milled grain mix that is corn, soy, and GMO free. During the winter months when they take a break from laying and they begin molting, they get an 18% protein mix, similar to what you would feed broiler chickens. As laying season approaches, we switch them to a layer feed with a lower protein, higher calcium content from the same source. As chicks, they get a different feed that is higher in protein, around 20% for the first few weeks of life. They also all have the option to free-range on our farm and fill themselves up on fresh grass, weeds and bugs. 🙂
How many chicks/eggs can I order at once?
Since we are a small farm and our availability highly depends on how our birds are producing at any given time, we ask that you keep your hatching egg order to a maximum of 2 dozen, and your chick order to a maximum of 12. If your needs fall outside of these parameters, please send us an email and we can discuss it further!
What color eggs can I expect from my pullets when they grow up?
When ordering chicks or eggs from our “Rainbow Flock”, you can expect a fun surprise of egg colors! We have learned over the years that a pullet that hatches out of an egg most often lays an egg a similar color to her mother, so keep tabs on which pullets hatched out of which eggs to get a good idea of what to expect. That being said, we also have roosters with exceptional egg color genetics that play into the resulting offspring! The main roosters in our Rainbow Flock at the moment are a Moss Egger and a French Black Copper Maran, which lay green and amber eggs, respectively. Your pullets could lay a shade anywhere in-between the genetics of her mother and the genetics her father carries. 🙂
As far as our pure breeds, you can expect the following:
Lavender Orpingtons: tannish/pinkish eggs
French Black Copper Marans: Amber/deep brown eggs, sometimes with speckles
Isbar/Silverudd’s Blue: Pale/pastel green and blue, oftentimes with light speckles
For pictures of our rainbow eggs, check out our Instagram page and Facebook page!
Will you refund my deposit if I change my mind?
When we make reservations, there are a lot of hours behind the scenes that are spent creating and tweaking the hatch schedule for the entire season. We have a number of upfront costs in the start of each season that your deposits help cover. For this reason, deposits are non refundable. Thank you!
How can I tell my chicks apart if I order different breeds?
When it comes to our pure breed chicks, thankfully we have 3 breeds that look vastly different at hatch. We will send you pictures of each one before pickup so that you can tell them apart. As far as incorporating chicks from our Rainbow Flock, their phenotypes can be a bit more varied. We will tell you how many of each breed is in your order, and are always just a message away down the road if you are having a hard time telling who is who. We resist the urge to place leg bands or zip ties on the chicks that we sell to. customers, only because those bands can cause serious harm if they are not properly removed and sized up and the chicks grow bigger.
My eggs hatched and a chick has splayed legs, help!
Splayed legs happen when the chicks have a hard time getting their feet under them and their legs do the splits. Thankfully, this is usually both preventable and treatable. We have good success preventing this by lining the bottom of our incubator with shelf liner when we put our eggs in lockdown. We find that when moved to the brooder, for the first week it also helps to keep shelf liner down for them as well as a panel heater or a heat lamp. For more splay leg fixes, check out Youtube – it’s pretty cool how many ideas are out there!
My chick turned out to be a rooster, can I bring him back and exchange for a female?
Due to maintaining good biosecurity practices on our farm, we cannot allow birds from another location to come back to our farm. When purchasing chicks or eggs, you are purchasing straight run birds that have no guarantee at being female. We do not offer an exchange program if your birds turn out to be males.
Do you vaccinate your flock?
At this time, we do not vaccinate our chicks or flock for any diseases. We practice good preventative measures, biosecurity and husbandry techniques to keep our flock and their resulting offspring fresh and healthy!