Hi Carrie,
In the interest of saving time and my needing to get to a couple of things, I'm pasting below something I wrote 8yrs ago in response to basically the question, "What's the difference between hatchery birds and birds from a breeder." Hopefully you find it helpful.
"Thanks for helping me understand your question. Let me see if I can answer it fully now. You mentioned “I’m new†and I don’t know if that means new to poultry or new to Welsummers. In the interest of trying to be helpful, I’ll be as detailed as I can and please don’t be offended if you already knew something I address.
The heart of your question is centered around the difference between a hatchery bird and a breeder bird which is then centered around the approach and the goal of each entity.
I learned the difference the hard way. Several years ago, I was not able to get Welsummers from a breeder as we had discussed on numerous occasions and over quite a lengthy time. I came to find out later that she is a bit touchy and I probably offended her by asking her a bunch of questions about her birds and her breeding program. Eventually, she said she was having fertility problems and couldn’t get me any chicks as promised. So I got impatient and decided to try some Welsummers from four different hatcheries. I had often seen that all Welsummers came from Lowell Barber and figured since they all came from him anyway, it shouldn’t take much to get some good looking Show Quality (SQ) birds. (I later found out that there were actually at least three separate Welsummer lines in the USA. Lowell Barber and his friend have/had Netherlands/UK birds. My breeder and Horst Greczmiel had/have German birds. There’s a fifth breeder who was in OR but I have yet to find out who it is or where he got birds from.)
Well, I couldn't have been more wrong! Out of over four dozen chicks (a dozen from each hatchery), I had to cull all but 3-4 of them. I kept those just to have some nice brown eggs for my customers but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of breeding them. I got a bunch with stubs (feathers on their toes and/or shanks), at least one I remember had a half gray foot and a couple others had some gray in their feet, several got white-tipped feathers as they grew older, a couple had crooked breasts, I culled for poor coloring or confirmation, and some laid lousy looking eggs. I don't remember what else right now.
For further expository purposes when looking at the pros and cons of hatchery vs. breeder, one must first define what each means. A "breeder" could supposedly be a hatchery and vice versa. Then one must look at the goals associated with each.
For the purposes of most discussions, a “Hatchery†is mostly referred to as a business whose primary goal is to make the most money in the shortest amount of time. A “Breeder†is mostly referred to as an individual whose primary goal is to preserve, protect, promote, perpetuate, promulgate, and improve a selected breed (or breeds), or variety (or varieties) within a breed according to the established Standard of Perfection for the APA and/or ABA. Therefore, I do not include in the definition of a “Breeder†those individuals who have a small backyard flock and throw a bunch of birds together just to sell eggs and/or chicks to help pay the feed bill (for example) without regard to the selectively breeding them to meet the aforementioned goals.
If one is just looking for a backyard flock that lays nice eggs, one is most likely not concerned with how well an individual bird actually represents the true breed. However, it costs the same to feed a poor looking bird as it does a tremendously nice looking bird.
Just as a judge who has a well-trained eye can distinguish between two tremendous birds as to which one he will crown as Champion, so anyone who works with a specific breed for very long will quickly be able to distinguish a hatchery bird from a well-bred bird.
The "problem" (for lack of a better word) with getting hatchery stock is that you simply have too many Unknown Factors. You must start from scratch because you have no ability to go back to a source to detect or determine a problem.
As for the statement "Just because they come from a hatchery doesn't mean they are bad stock", that may be true. However, one simply cannot with any degree of sincerity fail to admit that the probability of the stock not coming even close to the SOP is exponentially higher than that from a breeder.
The fact is a hatchery gets eggs from someone so they don't know for certain what the breeding process even was. All they can do is take the word of the person who sells them their eggs. Some hatcheries do maintain their own stock but, even with that being the case, the goal of a hatchery is to "mass produce" eggs for sale in order to make as much money as they can in the shortest possible time with the least amount of cost involved. That is a completely different goal than that of the breeder.
Now, I'm not saying that one can't take hatchery stock and make it better - or even end up with a Show Winner. Certainly one can. I am just trying to answer the question "what good is it" and am saying that the process to do so will take much more time, effort, and expense because of the unknown factors.
The fact that I wound up with 3 or 4 good birds out of almost 50 coupled with the arguments I made above, I think speaks volumes as to why one should get birds from a breeder if they truly want to preserve, protect, promote, perpetuate, promulgate, and/or improve the breed.
Finally, just something to think about as well, the fact that I got 3 or 4 birds out of almost 50 from a hatchery that were worth keeping, I believe is another reason why people who are serious about a particular breed should NOT buy from a hatchery. If a hatchery can't make money on a specific breed, they won't sell it. If they won't sell it, they won't buy eggs from those who are selling them that breed solely to mass produce eggs. If those folks can't sell their eggs to hatcheries, they will get something else, and the natural consequence is that only those serious about the breed will perpetuate it, which means a much higher QC standard will be maintained and all the faults and DQ's of the breed will be eradicated that much quicker.
The key to this whole discussion is to know what each party does and why they do it. What does a hatchery do and why do they do it? What does a breeder do and why do they do it? Then ask yourself, what do I want and why do I want it? Then go with either the hatchery or breeder who will meet those needs and goals.
Having said all that, I sure don’t want to give the impression that breeding and/or showing is something one has to do or even be interested in to have birds. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a small backyard flock of whatever eye-candy you choose and enjoying it.
I can also tell you that there are a lot of folks I’ve sold my culls to that are very happy with their birds. In fact, some of them are coming back for more this year. Some of those culls they got could actually be shown themselves. For example, I may get rid of some pullets and hens this year that I’ve shown myself and won awards with but their egg color is lighter than I want to breed for. Each year I am taking only the darkest blue eggs and breeding them which should improve the egg color. Same goes with the Welsummers. I’m only setting the darkest brown eggs. I’ve also got some Ameraucanas that lay a nice, large, blue egg but they’ve got a little black ticking in their lower hackles. That may disappear altogether once they molt but I’m going to cull them now so I can try and get rid of the black in next year’s progeny.
I suppose there is some truth to saying that we breeders deal in populations and others deal in individual birds but believe it or not we must break down the populations into individual birds. I won’t take the time here to detail my breeding plans because it’s quite lengthy. Suffice it for now to say that my breeding pens usually consist of a cock bird and 1-3 hens/pullets of a particular line combination.
I think most would agree that the vast majority of folks could care less what their chickens look like (comparatively speaking to the Standard) as they just want something that gives them the eggs they want and appeals to their eye. Let me put it this way, I have 13†Tri-colored Beagles that I had flown in from Iowa that came from Champion Field Trial parents. Just down the road from me about a quarter-mile is a neighbor who raises 13†(and maybe 15†too) tri-colored AKC Beagles for show. One of her dogs got loose one day and she came walking down the road to my place looking for it. I saw her and we struck up a conversation as she told me she was looking for her Beagle and that they showed. That’s when she realized I had Beagles and I told her mine were flown in from IA and came from champion Field Trial stock. There was an obvious disdain in her voice and demeanor after I said that. Now, does that bother me? Nope. Not one bit. I have to admit that she has obviously put a lot more time, effort, and expense into breeding and showing her dogs than I have mine. Ol’ Buck and Sadie may not be true to the conformation (I honestly don’t know if they are or not) and such that the AKC requires but Buck (Sadie is gone now) sure does give me a lot of pleasure watching him around this place and especially when I take him rabbit hunting.
And I need to add that hatcheries do a great job at creating interest in chickens and, frankly, meeting a demand that I doubt we breeders could do. I always say there’s nothing wrong with hatcheries. You just have to understand the differences between them and a breeder. Of course I also always say that it takes the same amount of time, effort, and expense to feed a really good looking bird as it does a poor looking bird. If you’ve never been to a poultry show, I’d encourage you to go. You will be absolutely amazed at the difference between say a hatchery Barred Rock, Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red, or whatever and those of a breeder’s."
So Carrie, I hope that was helpful. As John said, if you plan on showing, and I'd add breeding, do yourself a favor and get the best start you can. Go to a good Breeder!
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