What color are your Cornish Crosses legs?? McMurray failed! Rant...

[bibliophile birds]

when all else fails, it's time to call their local Better Business Bureau. bad BBB scores do actually affect businesses, so it's usually a decent tactic.

 

[jaku]

This is really surprising to me- I don't order birds from them anymore, but I do order other things, and I've never had a problem with McMurray. They've always seemed to bend over backwards trying to help. I could see if you ordered the "fry pan special," which AREN'T meaties, they might be a little unwilling to help, (I think the fry pan special is false advertising, personally,) but not in this case.

On another note, if you weren't happy with the size of these, don't order regular Cornish- or you'll have the same problem. Regular Cornish aren't meat birds either. Get a good batch of Cornish X's.

 

[sred98]

Honestly Jaku, it is surprising me, too. However, I checked out GardenWatchdog which does reviews on these things and they have gotten 6 negatives in the past 6 months. That seems excessive for a company that has had a really good reputation.

We called again today to try and get the rest of our money refunded. They said they would check into it and they wanted to know why we were unhappy!

I have a pet Dark Cornish. She's huge and fat. Of course, it took her a year to get that way! LOL! I'm not sure what we're going to do, or what I will order. Not going to order from McMurray's again, that's for sure!

Shelly

 

[Minniechickmama]

Shelly,
May I offer another suggestion, keep the birds a bit longer and keep feeding a high protein feed. You will get a little more size on them at least and you will still have something for your freezer. You could supplement their feed too with something high protein like oatmeal or beans? I know it is going to run more money for you, but better to spend a little more and have something to show for it. They would probably make good fryers in the end. Then cook down the bones too and you get a little more.

I am sad to hear you had a bad experience with MM. I remember being a kid and looking at their catalogs and thinking how beautiful their birds were. So, this year, when we finally got our first batch of chicks, they came straight from them. I had no problems whatsoever with my broilers other than having one runt. Although, I am not sure if he is really a runt or if they goofed and got a Cornish game bird in there by mistake. Knowing that they handle 80,000 birds there per hatching week or something like that, I would be surprised if they didn't have some screw ups. I had one BR chick that had bad legs and wouldn't eat when it arrived and ended up dying but it was obviously something to do with hatching with splayed legs.

As for the order fulfillment and service, I couldn't have been happier. I had two orders: 20 St. Run Broilers -all healthy and normal (if you call those freaks normal), and I had ordered 5 Austalorps and got 8, and one extra was even a pullet; then batch 2 was 25 all male Broilers, but got 2 pullets with that batch(sexing accuracy is only 82%), and with that a New Hamp. Red trio a Barred Rock trio and a rare chick with each and both were pullets. The only problem I encountered was a BR pullet that died in 4 days from splayed legs and not eating. I did get one runt in the second batch that I didn't think would ever catch up with the rest and put him in with the purebreds and now he is back with the rest of the broilers and is catching up enough that he could make a meal for 2 or 3 people. He is the only broiler who got a name too, Nugget as in chicken nugget. I took my first batch to process yesterday (only 9-the 7 roos and 2 pullets) and I had 3 over 5 pounds. I know the rest are going to be right in the same ball park except for Nugget. I couldn't be happier with the result. However, I think these are genetic freaks and I am reluctant to raise them again. I am appalled at their behavior like they are ALWAYS starving. It is not natural, nor is the way that half of them don't even feather out. So I am going to try my luck with crossing my Dark Cornish hens with the other three breeds I have and see what I come up with. I know that I will not get those huge breasts like we get with the CRX and they will take 4-6 more weeks to finish off, but to me, I want a more natural bird to put in my mouth in the future.

I haven't figured out the feed conversion on my meaties yet, but just mulling it over in my head, I didn't think that we have spent a huge amount of money to get them raised. The biggest expense for us has been housing. We have too many predators to free-range. I have a PVC pen for when they get to about 4-6 weeks to finish them, a prism-shaped ark for when the come out of the brooder and the brooder was in my garage. It was getting too cold there for a while to turn them outside with freezing temps. I feed twice a day and don't just let them have all they will eat because I think some of them will explode. Some of these suckers look like they have boobs from eating so much. But I am seeing that feeding them this way has still gotten us a great end product. Heck even my smallest ones yesterday are bigger than the whole chickens in the stores. I feed duck and goose grower from our local mill and it comes in crumbles. I think the protein is 17% or 19%, I don't remember exactly which. I have also found that even though they will eat grass in their run, they will not eat any fruits of veggies I have tossed in from the garden. I did have one roo yesterday that couldn't stand up and he was like that starting the day before butchering.

So, I would hope that your situation was an exception with MM. I hope they make good with you on the whole amount. But from a business standpoint, they don't want to just give up their goods. If they were to just give up easily at refunding money, then there would be people who aren't being honest running back to them for refunds. It may take some work on yours and your friends part, but I am going to guess that in the end you will get your money back from the shipping too. However, I wouldn't expect them to pay for the food or anything of that nature. You do have chickens that you can do something with. They may not be the massive chested mutants that you thought you were getting, but they do have some value to them. And if you don't want to mess with having them in your freezer, then like someone else suggested, go on Craigslist. I doubt you will have a hard time selling them. I don't want to sell mine but I have already had two friends ask if I would sell some to them. There are a lot of people out there who want to have fresh homegrown but for whatever reason don't or won't do it themselves. Take advantage of that market.

Good luck. I hope I don't sound preachy, I don't mean to be. I hope your next batch goes great.

Minnie

 

[Southerngirl]

Here's one from last spring: yellow legs. These guys were huge!

 

[MelCS]

You ordered the biggest fattest meat birds and what they sent you was the skinniest bag a bones. You invested time and resourses.

And your telling me the best they can do is refund the actual cost of the chicks?

Bologna!
The cost of the chicks is the smallest part of the investment. Adds up to nothing when compared to efforts expended.

If I were MM I would be working real hard to not lose the original buyer as a customer and possibly every one they tell. One thread on an internet forum like this can reach hundreds or thousands of potential customers. In their place I would be hoping this thread would read-- Murry McMurry messed up but made it right.

How?
Full refund of the cost of chicks including all shipping. Replacement at no cost at the time of customer's request. Coupons for reduced feed cost and goods such as vitamins, feeders, waterers, whatever. Phone calls to the customer expressing apology and willingness to make amends. Phone calls when replacement chicks arrive to make sure all is well. Frankly in a case such as this I would expend considerable energy to make it right.

No business can survive and thrive when treating their customers as the problem verses treating them as an asset.

I agree! I am in the process of building a coop for my meat birds and preparing for our first batch here in GA. I was actually going to use McM because I had heard good things about them. This scares me that the wrong birds are being sent out and from reading another post on FB this isn't the first time it's happened. I won't be purchasing my birds from their hatchery now.

 

[Dimondca2]

My friend and I ordered some Broilers from one of the hatcheries, and they just aren't as big as we think they should be. Some are half the size of the others, and the big ones aren't that big. And today, I noticed their legs aren't yellow...they're white.

If they are a Cornish/Rock hybrid, both of those have yellow legs, shouldn't the chicks have yellow legs, also? They are 5 weeks old and nowhere near big enough to eat. They are on Broiler feed free choice during the day with access to chopped corn and scratch as treats.

We are going to contact the hatcher tomorrow and see what is going on. Does anyone have any ideas?? Without saying the name of the hatchery, let's just say it's one of the major ones, those of you that have the broilers right now, what color are their legs??

Thanks!

Shelly

 

[Dimondca2]

Quote:

An entire batch of runts?? Ours are 7 weeks old today and not one is over 3 pounds. Also, we ordered all roos, and I am thinking over half of them are females.

We've sent the pics to the hatchery, waiting to hear back. Even if they send new ones, we're out all the cost of food, plus the time...this is really discouraging.

The hatchery said they should be a lot bigger with yellow legs.

Shelly

I did a post about my 16 chicks from McMurrays. I bought 16 female Cornish cross, I split the order with my daughter, she grabbed 8 and I grabbed 8. We took them home, raised them on the same food and such. After 6 weeks we brought them back together to finish growing out and mine had white skin and hers were yellow. Her 8 were bigger than mine with more feathers. We processed and weighed 4 so far @ 11+ weeks and they only averaged 2.5 pounds. I was expecting larger. We are going to do more this coming weekend and find out if they had gained more weight being 12+ weeks. Oh, my 8 chicks now have yellow legs and have caught up to the size of my daughter. So maybe it's environment.

 

[Dimondca2]

Yeah, but it doesn't cover the money for all the broiler feed, etc.

Shelly

Yeah, It is expensive. If I had the right set up to process the chickens then I might do it again but it wasn't worth all the time money feed I put in to get 2.5lb chickens after 11+ weeks.Smh!