Going Postal!

At MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. we strive to produce the best pheasants in the industry through many innovative practices: our emphasis on breeder selection, hatching egg production and the actual hatching process all focuses toward one goal. To provide our customers with the best potential chick that will grow well through the rearing process and produce a quality pheasant at maturity.

All that being said one of our greatest challenges is getting our chicks to our customer’s doors. Weekly we will ship chicks to all areas around the country hatching some weeks in excess of 100,000 birds! It’s just not possible to deliver every last bird, so we rely heavily on the U.S. Postal System.

Our goal is to get the birds to our customers as quickly as possible regardless of the mode of transportation. Although it would be nice to drop off our shipments at our local post office, that would not allow us to achieve our goal. Instead we take a 600 mile round trip to the Minneapolis airport to enter the U.S. Postal Airmail System. Minneapolis is the site of an air mail facility specific to shipping live animals. The level of service we receive here is excellent, and it allows us to work with people who really understand what we are trying to accomplish.

So let’s go on a journey which some chicks hatching at our hatchery.

Typically, it would be a Tuesday morning. Ben Lawton and his crew would begin pulling chicks, sexing, sorting and boxing very early in the morning. Our plan is have our trucks loaded and ready to go by 10 a.m. to arrive at Minneapolis by 3 p.m. to catch the afternoon flights. Delta & Northwest airlines are contracted by the USPostal service and provide direct flights for airmail all over the country. The folks at Minneapolis do an excellent job with the logistics of getting the chicks to the closest airport for the final transport to the destination post office. In many cases this allows a significant portion of our shipments to be next day!

All that being said it’s quite a task to pull this all off. Not only are we depending on our staff, but also the dedication of the U.S. Postal team. We are very fortunate to have access to a live airmail facility, and we know that this gets our birds to our customers ask quickly as possible, at a reasonable cost.

So the next time you see a Delta or Northwest airline in the spring or summer, it’s not all that unlikely that there could be MacFarlane pheasants taking a ride.

Bradley Lillie
MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc.