Urge Tractor Supply Company to Stop Selling Chicks & Ducklings

Baby chicks for sale at a Tractor Supply Company store, 2021.

The Tractor Supply Company is currently displaying an ominous countdown timer on their website to announce their upcoming Dangerous, Dreary “Chick Days.” Since 2021, United Poultry Concerns has been calling upon the Tractor Supply Company to stop carrying live chicks and ducklings in its stores – a practice that contributes to the spread of disease.

Poultry factory farms and transport methods, added to traditional farming practices, live bird markets, cockfighting, and the wild-caught bird trade, have created the conditions responsible for the spread of avian influenza (bird flu) viruses capable of infecting birds and humans alike. Backyard-poultry keepers and their birds are not immune to this contagion, as shown in How Infected Backyard Poultry Could Spread Bird Flu to People.

Salmonella infection of backyard birds, children, and adults is also a significant risk. More and more children have egg allergies and complications of seasonal flu. The risk of infection, said Dr. Pascal James Imperato of the State University of New York’s Health Sciences University, in 2009, is “especially high for young children who come into contact with baby chicks and ducklings.”

Despite these risks, parents regularly bring their children to Tractor Supply stores to handle and buy the birds as if they were toys, responding to the company’s “Chick Days” promotions.

In the past few years, UPC has received increased complaints and photos from customers and employees documenting, at TSC stores across the country, sick baby birds, vents impacted with encrusted feces, and filth in the tanks and trays including unwashed, often empty, fecal-filled food and water dishes.

Read more: Tractor Supply Employee Exposes the Company’s Cruelty to Chicks and Ducklings as a Matter of Policy and Practice

What Can I Do?

Contact your local government administrators where there are TSC stores. Talking points can be from a human health perspective – the spread of Avian Flu. The fragile birds arrive at the stores typically from out of state. They are often dumped in parks and ponds where they could be exposed to avian influenza through the droppings of infected wild birds, or they could spread the virus if they themselves were already infected. Avian influenza is known to jump species including humans, so this is a health concern as well as a humane issue.

Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper(s).

Express your concern to store managers and to the head of Tractor Supply Company:

(Read previous letters from 2021 and 2022)

• Hal Lawton, CEO
  Tractor Supply Company
  5401 Virginia Way
  Brentwood, TN 37027
  Phone: 615-440-4600 extension 4601
  Website: www.tractorsupply.com
   
• Customer Solutions:
  1-877-718-6750
  [email protected]
   
• Please post a comment on Tractor Supply's Facebook page. Each Tractor Supply store appears to have its own local Facebook page as well.