Thank you for the feedback and we appreciate you being willing to share your experience. Hatching for the first time is certainly an education and adding the risks with shipped eggs there is a lot of factors involved. I'm glad we talked and during our hour long conversation it seemed a lot was done right from everything you described and some improvements were discussed of what could be done for future hatches as well. Including adding the GoVe (hydrogemeter) to have a 2nd device to help compare your temperature and humidity to what your incubator says.
Having early hatches as you experienced can happen with the Rainbow eggs due to some of the breeds in that flock do lay smaller eggs. Having chicks hatch on day 19, this also gives information about your hatch. Having a high temperature is called fast hatching. Meaning a higher temp they hatch sooner than the default 21 days for chickens. A side effect of fast hatching or having too high of temperature is intestinal issues, major chick deformities and can cause shrink wrapped chicks (can't get out of the eggs fast enough and they get shrinkwrapped in the egg). All things we discussed in our conversation to help for your next hatching experience and sounds like you have #2 hatch already in the incubator.
Seeing the experience of this hatch, the option of sending more eggs was not a good option or risk worth exploring after this first experience. Also sending free chicks and free shipping as what was asked for is not a business practice we offer for mediocre hatch results as it would be a complete loss. Ex: Of the $75 paid for eggs and shipping, $24 of that is just the shipping cost. Sending chicks would cost $35 to ship so this would be $60 of the $75 before any chicks were added. 25% off the same breed of chicks and pay for shipping was offered but declined. At times we have to accept responsibility of our outcome and learn from it for next time. I believe our phone call definitely will help you for future hatches. Hatching eggs is a learned skill and takes experience using your incubator, understanding how to hatch and what factors can cause the hatch to go awry. There is no book that can teach all the hatching factors just experience in doing.
We're glad that your 2nd hatch is going well and that you were able to network with local individuals for eggs you could pickup. We often support our local chicken community especially when we do not have particular breeds, we direct those customers to the local Facebook groups as it is a great option to support our fellow local chicken keepers. The difference with AzChickens is we are tested for diseases each month and twice per year with our veterinarian and the state. This means we continually check that we breed happy, healthy, disease free birds. Chickens do hide sickness very well and many diseases can only be tested for. Additionally AzChickens breeds for heat harty birds. Chickens from a hatchery being bred from a backyard enthusiast do not get pushed to extreme temperatures and often many are unfortunately lost in the summertime because of our heat. A rule we breed by: We don't breed a hen until they're a year old which means they have survived an entire summer heat, proving heat hartiness. That is the confidence and differences in partnering with AzChickens for your flock. We wish you the very best on your flock and hope you enjoy all the babies! God Bless!
