oh....my...gosh! Surprise delivery...what a mess!

****sorry this one is so long, I am just beside myself............****

Oh my goodness....where I live, the PO will deliver your chicks/birds to you and we are so lucky that way, but today when the post man stopped and honked, I could not figure out what he had for us....oh no, a chick shipping box! We were not expecting anything, we got one of our orders last week for 100 chicks and got our order this week for 10 ducklings and 10 poults. It ended up being for an order we placed well over 2 months ago and cancelled....when we cancelled, we placed a different order at the same time, which is the one we got last week. Now we have 50 more chicks and 10 new keets. Oh boy! We just don't have the room, so I don't know what we will do with them.
In the barn we have 75 (4 mo old) barred rock roosters in one pen, pigeons and their babies in another pen, with a cage/heat lamp set up with the ducklings (in pigeon pen), 2 broody hens and their eggs in their own set up, and the last of the barn is holding our 34 laying hens, 2 more broody hens and their eggs and 2 roosters. DH built a brooder house, and in there are the 100 cornish cross chicks.....we only ordered 50 of the cornish and then a 'barnyard special' from Griffith....and he sent ALL of them in the cornish. We called him to 'complain' and he acted like it was no big deal....said that all they had was cornish to fill the order, so that is what we got. Welllllll, that is not what we ordered.....the 'barnyard special' by his own definition is 50% roosters and 50% pullets, with a garentee (sp?) on there being at least 50% pullets.....and anyone that knows anything about cornish knows the poor little things get sooooo fat so fast that the pullets would never make it to lay eggs and can only be used for meat....not my definition of a pullet......so I feel we were tricked by him.
This 'cancelled' order came from Griffith too..........I don't know how many of you have heard of him or ordered from him before.....he is an 84 year old man with a small business located in Fulton, MO.
We have had several orders from him before, and his birds are always healthy and strong, and he is the cheapest we have found. My dh called him late last week, after calling on Wed to talk to him about the 'barnyard special' and ended up talking to his wife. This is the first time she had ever answered the phone.....it turns out that Mr. Griffith had a stroke last week, and was not doing too well, so I am sure that Mrs. Griffith and their helper have their hands full right now. We not only don't have the room for the birds, but we have not payed for the surprise cancelled order yet and I'm not sure what we should do about it. We didn't have the money to pay for it, which is why we switched the order to start with grrrrrrrrr! Also, I have no idea how to raise keets....we've never had them before. I'm guessing that they die pretty easy, as the original order was for 10 keets and they sent 13....we already lost one of them in the shipping box.
As it is, I had to move one of our broody hens and her eggs out of the only cage we could think of to use for these chicks, and I think she has now abandoned the eggs she was sitting on because of it. Also the cage has 1/2"x1" wire, and the smallest chicks can slip through the holes if they want to, and the cage is small enough that 50 chicks are crowding it.....not a good place for the keets......they are still in the shipping box....I really have NOWHERE safe for them.....oh my gosh....what a mess!!!!

ladybugsabound2 I am so sorry. Is there anyone around who might buy some of those extra chicks off you? You might be able to post an ad at your local feed store (after all the person who buys your chicks will end up buying feed from them!).
I'm afraid that you will also have to call the hatchery and explain that this was an order that had been canceled and you aren't in a position to pay for them now. Maybe you can arrange to pay for them later (especially if you get to sell them off)?

That's the best I can think of off the top of my head.
Good luck.

MollyD

Thank you so much for the reply Molly. My dh got home and started shifting different things to different cages and pens and found room for them all, thank goodness....I didn't know what in the world we were going to do. Our 3 rabbits are not going to be very happy in a lot smaller cage, but we are selling them on Sat at an auction, so it won't be much longer. We are up to our ears in birds, so we'll have to put raising rabbits off for awhile. I think we are going to sell the surplus cornish at the sale too, to make room for the new ones. As a bonus, we now have the right size little ones, (with getting the wrong order) to put the only 4 we just hatched with. That frees up one cage, so the keets are going in there. WHEW! I don't know if I want the keets in our bedroom though.....they sure are loud!! :)

My dh called Griffith to tell them of the mix up. Mr. Griffith is still in the hospital and with all that is going on with them, it is understandable that things have gotten confusing there. Mrs. Griffith was very nice, and happy that we didn't try to send them back....(.we couldn't have done that, they would never have made it). We explained that we wouldn't be able to pay for them for awhile, and she was very understanding and said it was fine, just pay when we could........whew.

I'm just glad things are straightening out and calming down.....my belly has been in knots all day over this!

Are you liable for something you cancelled and they sent anyway? Seems like that would be illegal to still send it. Did you keep proof thar you cancelled it? I'd check up on it!
Audrey

Hi Audrey, if it was any other hatchery, I would have called and thrown a fit. I would have said that we did cancel the order, that we placed a new order at the same time and got that one, so I know they got the cancel call too. I would have said we canceled it and they came anyway, and there was no way we were going to pay for them. They probably would have sent paper work on them for the new order, and the canceled order. This guy though is pretty small and doesn't even include a packing list in or on his shipping boxes. He just has these shipping labels and writes the name and address in, what the order was, and amount due or paid.
I feel torn over it all......on the one hand my heart goes out to him and his family with what they are going through and on the other, we should we be held responsible for their mess up? I really wish I had been the one to talk to Mrs. Griffith, because I would have at the very least not only asked for time to pay, but asked for a discount as well. My dh talked to her, and he is a little too much of a softie, so now I guess we are on the hook for all of it. I just don't think it is really fair! :( They messed up, so why should we be the only ones that pay for it? (sigh)

Poultry poultry everywhere. Sounds like your cup runith over, or in this case your pens. Oh what a mess. I feel for you.
I agree you shouldn't have to pay for the chicks you cancelled. Maybe since the husband is still in the hospital you can give it a couple of weeks and then call and talk to her and work out something. You really shouldn't be paying for something (or paying full price) if you didn't want them regardless of the situation on the other end. I'm sure with the situation there they are glad not to have to be taking care of the chicks either so they may be happy to give you a discount on them. At least you have them all situated at the moment and in a pen of some sort.

Hi smedgekles, yep....my pens are for sure 'runith over'...lol Everyone seemed to get through the night alright....what a relief. We had to swipe the heat lamp off the ducklings and were a little worried about it. We moved the duckling cage to the brooder house, hoping that with all the body heat from the other birds, they would be ok....they were...thank goodness!
I think I will wait awhile and then call to see about a discount. I don't think my dh will, he doesn't see things the same way. In his mind, we have the birds.....even if he canceled the order, so we should pay for them. I figure we should maybe pay something for them, just not full price! (sigh) It just works under my skin something awful to feel like we have been 'taken' .......I would never do business this way, or make someone else pay for my screw up! I hope they try to make it right in SOME way.
oh yeah, and we are thinking that at least 1/2 of the chicks in this surprise package are cornish.....oh boy, just want we need....MORE cornish....NOT! (again....sigh) :)

I don't know where you are at in missouri, but I live in central missouri and may be able to take some of the cornish off your hands if you are still wanting to get rid of some. Also this weekend is the Jacob's Cave swap meet and it is one of the largest in the midwest and I am sure you could sell some of your chicks there if you wanted to. If I can help please e-mail me at knslwilliams1@earthlink.net.

Sheila

Thanks for the offer Sheila, that was very nice of you......I just looked it up on mapquest and we are 155 miles apart. We are about 23 miles from Kirksville in NE Mo. We live right in the middle of nothing.....20 miles from the nearest gallon of milk. I think my dh is going to take some to the area 'critter' auction, which lucky for us is on Sat. : )

Isn't living right in the middle of nothing kind of nice though? We would like to be a little more in the middle of nothing than we are. I have inlaws in MO. Not too awfully far from Lake of the Ozarks but pretty much in the middle of nothing as well. Nice and quiet :)

Ladybug, we are closer than that to milk...1 1/2 miles, but still in the middle of the state forest which is alongside the national forest. So, when people ask where we live, I tell them 5 miles past the boondocks.

GG

ladybug, should your name be chickens abound? LOL.... well, at least if half of the surprise package turn out to be layin gpullets, and you can sell the cornish, you should be in OK shpae.

what a mess! i would be tied up in knots over this for days! godd for you two for taking care of all these. sounds like he hatched out more cornish than he sold...

smedgekles, you are in Conroe, DUH! take a look at this duckling in conroe needing a rescue home./..

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/858589/

tf

It is nice to live in the middle of nowhere....now. We have been here for a year now and it sure took some getting used to, that is for sure. I lived the 1st 20 yrs of my life in a town of 67,000.....wow, what a change. Sure is nice though. We have 7 acres and our nearest neighbor is 1/4 mile away. The land around here is rolling hilly land, and we are on top of a hill. In every direction looking around there is nothing but rolling ground and a ton of trees. I have come to LOVE it! We live right up close to the road though, and at first I thought we would make people going by mad at us because our chickens, turkeys and ducks roam EVERYWHERE, including the road........but they have gotten used to it and slow down when they get to our corner now. I'm glad people around here are nice! Of course, we also have a neighbor with cattle that get out all the time, so people have just learned to look out on this road!

Wow GG, it sounds like you have the best of both worlds! Wow, and in a state forest....I bet it sure is pretty there! '5 miles past the boondocks'...lol : ) I'll have to keep that in mind for later use, except I'd have to say 20 miles....this is a rural area already. With the rising cost of milk and how far away it is, we got 2 little goats and are hoping for our own milk in about 8 months.....then I'd have to say I'm 30 feet from the nearest gallon of milk! I hope goat milk is good.......I can't wait!

I went to the link TF. We don't have ducks but will take it if she wants. It wouldn't be lonely that is for sure, my kids would spoil it rotten. I left her a message on the post.

Hi tf....chickens abound....lol....it sure could be now, huh? Yeah, at least half of the surprise was pullets....I'm pretty sure, but we won't know for sure for a little while. In a round about way, it looks like we got what we should have gotten when the 100 chicks came, only now we have 50 extra cornish and the keets. Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?
And a possible BIG bonus.....we might not have to pay for the 'surprise' after all! You all are not going to believe this, but I got a call from Griffith Hatchery yesterday 'confiming' an order she said my dh placed on Wed......for 50 of the 'barnyard special' and 10 keets.....after I picked my chin off the floor, I actually managed to mutter uhhhhh, uhhhhhh, uhhhhhhh. It turned out to be Mr. Griffith's niece, and with him still being in the hospital and them not having any kids, she was trying to figure out his mess and where all the babies were supposed to go. She said she had 1700 babies and had to figure out who was supposed to go where! (glad I'm not her) I explained to her what happened and that we had gotten the canceled order on Wed. and that my dh had talked to Mrs. Griffith the night before and told her of the mistake. Mrs. Griffith took what my husband said was in the 'canceled order' and wrote it down on an order form! Oh my! Their niece told me that Mrs. Griffith isn't much better off than Mr.Griffith and forgets everything from hour to hour. Now THEY have a mess for sure!
So, the niece told me at least twice 'thank you for taking them, you just keep them and keep taking care of them;.........so we are still not sure, does that mean we don't have to pay for them after all?
I thanked her a couple of times for calling first.....if she had just sent them and the mail man had shown up with another 'surprise chick' box, the mail man would have witnessed my first ever faint!!

You know tf, about 8 years ago I would still be in knots too.....I'm the one that needs to have a plan, to know whats coming up and what to be prepared for.....and my dh is a fly by the seat of your pants type....leap now and maybe look later, buy this critter or that critter at an auction and not know where it is going to go when he gets home with it.......after all this time with living with that kind of behavior, it still frustrates me and shakes me up from time to time, but not nearly as much as it used to. I think I have learned more to roll with the punches. Thats how it came to be that I FREAKED when the 'surprise' came and when my dh got home he just la-de-dah strolled around switching things around and finding spaces for them all, like he didn't have a care in the world. I think what they say is true though....opposites do attract......how boring would life be if we had someone JUST like us?

smedgekles....it sounds like there might be a duck in your future! I hope it works out, they sure are fun to watch! : )

OMG, ladybug, that really would have been something. BTW, you do NOT have to pay for anything that is sent to you by mistake from anybody. So, I wouldn't worry about paying for something you didn't order, even if they are the nicest people in the world. It was THEIR mistake.

GG

yeah GG, I don't think we will. It really sounds like the niece is just happy we didn't try to send them back and is not worried about payment on them. My dh talked to Mrs. Griffith about the mix up, but now we know the story on her. As bad as it might sound, when my dh asked me if we had to pay for them now, I said 'well, I doubt it....I kind of doubt Mrs. Griffith even remembers talking to you.' The niece said they just can't handle it anymore and need to get out of the business. As much as I would hate to see them close up.....they have the strongest, healthiest and cheapest little babies we have ever gotten.....it seems like they just can't handle it all. I really feel bad for them and the family that is trying to fix the mess!

And the way I figure it, with him kind of cheating us on our 'actual' order of 100 chicks last week, it in some sort of way makes up for that.

Yes ladybugs there could be a duck in our future. I haven't heard back from her yet on the post though. My kids keep asking and wondering. They will be disappointed if she already found it a home. They were a bit excited at the prospect of having a duckling to spoil.

Hi smedgekles--she replied on the Orphan Duck thread--looks like you have a duckling!

Ladybug I could help laughing at what your face might have looked like if a third order of chicks had arrived on your doorstep!!!
I believe that "just keep them" means no charge. Whatever you get for selling them will make up for the feed and inconvenience.

MollyD

ladybug, call her basck with my info.... bet i coiuld get them ptretty cvheap, & i can make some space for them... dmail me their phone number?

tf

happy to say my friend ordered 100 cornish from them. the price was irresistable. they ship on tuesdays, so if anybody wants some i will post their phone number. Mr. Griffith answered the phone himself but had the neice write down the order, i would suspect writing may be difficult at the age even without a mild stroke!

think i will call back and order some guineas, JUST IN CASE i don't hatch enough LOL

(573) 642-2114 they are in MO... you can't beat getting your chicks from a small breeder/hatchery... unless you hatch them yourself!

tf

yippe! no problem, 10 pearl keets added to the cornish order...

This message was edited Jun 7, 2008 12:00 PM

Wow, I wonder if they are going to get flooded with orders now?

We went to the auction today and sold 20 of the cornish.....would probably have taken more but didn't have a big enough cage. It's probably a good thing we didn't though, they didn't sell as well as we had hoped....it's just getting too hot and most people around here have what they want already. We didn't really make anything on them, but at least we didn't lose any and we now have more room for the others. We figure we'll make the money on the flip side though....finishing them and selling them as meat.

And of course, who can go to an auction and not buy anything? Goodness, did we really need to come home with more? We got 8 Americana pullets that are about 2 months away from laying for $3 each, and we sell or hatch they eggs, so that was a heck of a deal.....and does anyone know what a gray taloose (sp?) and Buff goose duckling will end up looking like? If no one does, I guess we'll find out soon enough...we got 5 of them!! Gotta love a critter auction.....most of the time!

oh dear! my DH would never let me go if we had one around here!

oh yes, I bet you could get into all kinds of trouble there, huh tf? They really do have a little bit of EVERYTHING there and it can be so 'addicting' ......either everything is just so cute or such a good deal that it can be hard to walk away from them or not get into yet another kind of animal! It already looks like enough of a zoo around here.....my SIL said we were nuts! : ) well.....maybe just a little! lol

;-)

but the nicest kind of nuts :-)

MollyD

well thank you Molly D! : )

You're welcome! We get a similar reaction around here LOL

MollyD

yeah, I have already kind of noticed......it's nice to be somewhere where we are not odd man out for once and 'with' people who certainly understand!

LOL yep we're all nuts here! Where else would you hear someone talk about the chickens in their bedroom and not bat an eye? LOL

MollyD

ROFL! Thank goodness for Dave's Garden : )

i second that!

Lady Bug-

Where is the animal auction that you are going to? I have heard of one at Kingsville and Boonville? Is one of the the one you attended? If not, where are you going????

Sheila

We go to the one in Centerville, Iowa which for us is 35 miles away. Of course for us, we have to drive pretty far to get to anything, so that is not bad. It's called Moore Exotics & Auctions. They hold their sales on the 1st Saturday of the month, from March to November.
It's not the best we have ever been to, but we still enjoy it.
We are all pretty upset about what happened yesterday, but it's not the auction company's fault and they tried to make it right with us. When we went to get the 6 roller pigeons we bought and were so excited about getting, they were gone. Someone had stolen them and also one of the roosters we sold to someone else. It makes me so mad that all it takes is one dishonest person can ruin it for everyone! It is a family run auction place, and they were all upset about it. They gave us our money back, but we would have rather had the pigeons.
The old man of the family was so upset, he said they were going to have to change their system to stop the thief. I'm not sure what he is going to do, probably hire another helper for that day, but from now on we will take extra cages and put what we buy, as soon as we buy, into our own cages right away. The only reason we didn't do that was because all of our cages were used for what we were selling, and still had animals in them.
I imagine between the auction company and us taking preventive measures, it won't happen again. What a shame!
I was happy that they auction house tried to make it right the best they could and not only gave our money back from the pigeons we bought, but also still gave us the money from the sold rooster. They took the full hit. Not everyone would have done that.
On a plus note, the barred rock rooster that we sold was a 'floggin' rooster, so whoever stole him will get his just desserts!! : ) I am a true believer in what goes around, comes around and he will get his! lol

Sheila, if you end up going you'll have to let me know. I would love to meet another DG'er!

Christy

Christy won't the thief steal from trucks etc if you put animals in cages when you buy them?
Bet there is someone who works there helping the thief. Too easy for them to get what they want without inside help. Hope they find the person.

MollyD

I wonder how far Centerville is from me??

Trip distance: 216.89 miles Time: 4 hrs 9 mins

;-)

the weather cooled down, i am on my game!