We don't have a 'big box' feed store like
TSC here, but I would never buy chicks at the local feed store. They have a bin labeled 'assorted poultry, $8'...regular chicks, bantams, ducklings, guineas, goslings, poults...all mixed up together! Can you imagine some person who doesn't know better going in to buy chicks and ending up with geese?!
I don't know about
Tractor Supply, but having worked a while in the pet industry, I know that some stores will purposefully hire people who do not have experience or knowledge. I breed aquarium fish and know a lot about them. I have gone into pet shops for interviews to work in their fish department, and have been told by the management that they would not hire me because I simply knew too much, and they wanted someone who didn't know anything, so they could be trained to the store's methods without questioning them. These stores usually did have questionable management/care practices--such as not treating sick animals (not just fish either, I mean cats, dogs, birds too!) because it is cheaper to let them die and get new ones usually. And they did not want a fish salesperson who knew the requirements of the fish, because they did not want someone who would talk kids out of buying too many fish or a big expensive fish that would outgrow their tank and die...it was better for business to have someone who would just repeat a few lies to the customer, smile, and send them home with as much stuff as they could be talked into buying. I certainly hope this is not the case with many stores and that I just found a few bad ones; it was a terrible shock to find out things like this.
I wouldn't be too hard on the kids working in the feed store...there are many people who have been keeping and raising chickens for years and don't know all the facts. When I bought some laying hens a few months ago, the lady I got them from assured me that the white ones would lay white eggs, the brown ones brown eggs...she could not even tell the difference between hens and roosters. She told us that two of the birds were the parents of the others...well, turns out both 'parents' were 3 month old pullets! And as for feed store employees knowing what and how to feed...I never have fed layer feed to my birds. We buy scratch and oyster shell, that's it. And our birds in the past layed daily for 2 years before we would cull them at that age. The two laying hens I have now are the same, and all I give them is 'garbage' from the kitchen, and scratch. Many 'old timers' feed nothing but scratch, and if they are teaching the younger generation working at the store, then they will teach them the way they know. And of course, they cannot train every person in every department, and chicks are not really a department that is there all the time. And once you have someone who knows what they are doing, then they are worth more money as an employee, and the store doesn't like to pay more than it has to.
