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Trying To Keep Everyone Happy

On May 22, 2010 in General by spope

Overall, the farm is running well.  As anyone can imagine, there are issues – issues with chick shipments, with employees, and a myriad of other things. 

Egg production is decent, but that is about all.  The breeders started laying earlier this year, and now they are backing off earlier too.  Fertility and hatchability are better than we’ve had for the past few years.  We kept about the right number of breeder hens – we still have chicks to sell (and we want to be in that position) but not too many.  It looks like it will all work out.

Shipping chicks is stressful.  Stressful for us, sometimes for the chicks and for the customer.  We had a 6,000 chick shipment booked to fly from Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow on Tuesday.  We got the shipment to the airline in plenty of time, and had all the necessary paperwork provided.  It was all good.  The chicks were held in an airline holding facility and about an hour before the scheduled flight was to leave – the chicks were put onto an airline vehicle to be transported to the waiting plane.  But the driver of the airline vehicle went to the wrong plane and sat – and he sat so long that by the time the error was discovered, the plane the chicks were supposed to be on had left for London.

So my cell phone rang at 9:45 pm Tuesday night.  Anytime my cell phone rings that late it’s rarely good news.  And Brad and I and our freight broker Nancy Babula had to decide what to do.  Nancy is so conscientious, and she took it upon herself to drive to O’Hare and see that the chicks were kept in an office (temp 70 degrees) overnight.  The chicks then left on a plane the next day.  We have not heard how the chicks handled the extra day of transit.

It was a warmer week, so the number of calls we received from customers stating that there postal shipments of chicks had arrived was down.  But we still had a few calls, and it’s disheartening at times.  Probably the most difficult part for me is when the customer calls and the customer is angry and blaming.  I have a hard time knowing how to deal with that situation.  I don’t want to get defensive, and yet I want to convey to the customer that we do so much.  Ben at our hatchery times our hatches so well, so that the chicks are just hatched the morning they are to be shipped.  And instead of just taking the chicks to a local or nearby post office to ship them, we take the chicks 250+ miles to the Minneapolis Airport Air Mail Facility to get the chicks into the system the best way we can.  Our boxes clearly state to keep the chick boxes at 70 degrees.  So when a customer calls and says that they went to the post office and it was 40 degrees outside and when they arrived at the post office and the chicks were outside on a cart and the customer is mad at us – what do we say? 

We are shipping 100,000 chicks a  week.  The office staff – Sarah, Char, Mary Jo, Bonnie and Mary (and Brad) are doing a good job.  The hatchery is outperforming Brad’s predictions (Brad estimates how many chicks we’ll hatch) week after week.  The drivers are doing well delivering the chicks.    All we can do is to do our best.



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