Every spring the scammers come out of their seedy little hidey holes to swindle new backyard chicken keepers out of their hard earned money. Worse, the tricks and tactics used are getting sneakier and more sophisticated. Thousands of dollars are lost by chicken buyers every year so make sure you are aware of the ways you can be duped. Here is how to avoid scams when buying chicks:
How to Avoid Scams When Buying Chicks
If it is spring time, there are chicken scammers about who will try to fool you. They may be offering hatching eggs that you pay for but which never arrive or chicks that don’t exist. Or the “pullets” are all males. I’ll share the scams that new (and experienced!) chicken keepers fall victim to in the hopes that you can be forewarned and avoid them!
Cockerels sold as Pullets
Hatcheries will sell sexed male chicks in bulk at a huge discount that can be shipped or picked up in person. Most people cannot visually sex a four day old chick and new chicken keepers certainly cannot. Unscrupulous individuals capitalize on this, especially in the early spring or during chick buying panics. They will purchase boxes of 100 male chicks for $1.50 to $2 each and then sell them as straight run or sexed pullets for $5+ per chick. It will be a number of weeks before buyers realize they have been duped. This scam is especially prominent in states with commercial hatcheries within driving distance like Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
How to Avoid this Scam: Place your own order for chicks from a hatchery, split a hatchery order with someone who will show you the receipt for sexed pullets or buy sexed pullets from a feed store. Scammers are almost always using your impatience against you. If there is a chick buying panic and you are desperate to get chicks, slow down and proceed with caution. Buying chicks on the side of the road or at a flea market puts you at risk of being a victim of this type of scam.
Fly By Night Chicks for Sale
There will be some scammers who show pictures of just-hatched chicks in shipping boxes and assure you that if you’ll pay by cash app right now, he will ship the chicks immediately. They often pop up in Facebook poultry groups and are able to scam a couple people out of money before they are discovered.
How to Avoid this Scam: Breeders should have a Facebook page at the very least, if not a website of their own. Anyone shipping chicks across state lines should be NPIP tested and able to provide paperwork proving testing has been done. You can check the US NPIP Registry to see if the individual or farm is listed. If asking for proof of NPIP gets a non-response, this is a red flag that the individual may be a scammer. Do not give them money to “ship chicks” simply because they posted a couple pictures. Purchase from a reputable hatchery or breeder with an established farm page or website instead.
Offshore Scammer Disguised as a Breeder
If someone is selling chicks or hatching eggs on Facebook or Craig’s List and the “breeder” responds by needing to send you a code that you then text back to them to prove you are not a scammer, they are a scammer. This is an international scammer who is using the code sent to you to backdoor steal your phone number so they have a US-based phone number to use for more elaborate financial scams. There are no chicks or eggs, they are simply using any bait that gets someone to start talking to them. Do NOT agree to accept a texted code that you must then send to them and do not click on any links they send.
The Reverse Scam
Breeders beware! This scam type involves a buyer looking to buy chicks or hatching eggs, which they pay for using PayPal with buyer protection. Once you have shipped off their order, they file a PayPal Significantly Not As Described (SNAD) claim, saying the animals arrived dead. Even if you shipped them hatching eggs. PayPal overwhelmingly sides with buyers when these types of claims are filed without doing much real investigation. PayPal will deduct the funds from your account and the scammer walks away with your money and your eggs or chicks.
How to Avoid this Scam: The scammer usually posts their request for an expensive colored laying hybrid or rare breed in multiple Facebook groups or forums with the same text copied & pasted. They seem very interested in getting eggs or chicks from more than one breeder and will ask any breeder who comments to private message them so their discussion is not publicly visible. After a few hours they delete that post with all of its comments and then post the exact same request again, hoping to lure in more breeders with the fresh post. These people typically are chicken keepers and/or chicken resellers looking to scam anyone willing to ship them chicks or fertile eggs. Their insistence to pay by PayPal and only PayPal is a red flag to watch out for. Many chicken breeders have already dealt with this scam so they no longer accept PayPal payments.
Be an Informed & Savvy Buyer
As the interest in backyard chicken keeping continues to grow and inflation puts a strain on household budgets, the number of scammers will increase and may become harder to detect. I hope this article has given you some actionable tips on how to avoid scams when buying chicks. If you have seen another type of scam not mentioned here, feel free to give us all a heads up in the comments below!
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