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Agia Skepi – Chittering Valley Farm (Agia Skepi Pty Ltd), referred to herein as “us” or “we”, is the sole owner and operator of this website. We request that you respect the copyright of our content and use this website as per our Terms and Conditions as well as our Privacy Policy. Particular attention must be given to the purchase of fertile eggs, both collected and posted. Upon any purchase, we assume that you have read, understood and accepted our Terms and Conditions as well as our Policies.
Purchase of hatching eggs:
Our fertile eggs are sold fresh, in other words they have not been incubated, and were typically laid within the two days prior to purchase. When ordering fertile eggs for postage or collection, you will be contacted with an estimated date that the order will be fulfilled. Typically, this is within 1-6 weeks from the day of purchase and it depends on the season as well as the number of orders received prior to yours.
We ship all our eggs via Australia Post Express using eggsafe packaging that we have optimised over the years. We typically ship on Mondays and Tuesdays Australia-wide, and occasionally on Wednesdays within WA. The vast majority of our eggs arrive within the same week. However, on occasion some parcels are delayed and may arrive the following week. We cannot take responsibility for shipping delays by Australia Post. This is a risk that you, as the buyer, accept to undertake. The eggs we post are mostly laid the two days prior to postage and are so fresh that as long as they have been treated appropriately during transit, their viability should not be affected by a short delay. We always provide you with your tracking number so that you can follow your parcel.
Please note that we do not sell eggs from any of our breeding pens if fertility is less than 90%. We check the egg fertility of all our breeding pens weekly and therefore are confident that the fertility of the eggs you purchased is at least 90%. Poor handling during transportation (either by Australia Post or by you while you are transporting them) and/or inappropriate/suboptimal incubation conditions (either in an incubator or under a broody hen) can severely affect the viability of the embryos and result in poor hatching rates that can even be 0%. We do not take responsibility for poor hatching rates because we have done everything in our part to ensure that you receive great quality fertile eggs, and therefore everything else after that is beyond our control. This includes raising healthy and strong breeders, weekly checking the fertility of our eggs and the hatching rates in our incubators, and taking every care in packaging our eggs in the best and safest possible way for transportation. It is the buyers’ responsibility to research the appropriate hatching conditions for the eggs they are ordering, to follow the status of their parcel and to pick it up on a timely manner so as to avoid any exposure to the weather elements or mistreatment by Australia Post as well as any other potential risks. When eggs arrive damaged, we may discuss with the buyer the possibility of providing partial or full replacements, although we do not take any responsibility for this, which is always at the buyer’s risk.
Please note that eggs of different breeds have varying levels of sensitivity to posting (transit by car and plane). Although we can discuss with you the anecdotal evidence on this upon request, we assume that upon placing your order you are fully aware of any risks (discussed with us or not) and are confident to undertake them. Therefore, we take no responsibility for poor hatching rates of any of our posted eggs due to breed-specific sensitivity to travel.
It is important to read this if you are purchasing pink and purple eggs from us. These are typically in our Fairytale and Dream Dozens, as well as in our Pink Dozens. Pink and purple eggs are most of the times cream-shelled or brown-shelled eggs that are covered by an x amount of bloom. The bloom is a protective cover and can be calcium-based or protein-based. The amount of bloom a hen adds to each of her eggs can vary from one day to another, making her eggs look different from one day to another, often very different. All her eggs though carry her bloom genetics irrespectively of how each egg looks. We do not only sell the eggs with heavy blooms from that hen, but we offer all her eggs, some looking more pinky or purple than others. The value of her eggs is the genetics they carry, not their specific appearance. Because we do not control the amount of bloom the hen will add to each of her eggs each day, we cannot and do not guarantee the colours you will receive. It will be what was laid that week and may differ from specific photos we advertise for these dozens. As mentioned above, it is this hen’s (and rooster’s who mated her) genetics that we offer, not specific colours laid on certain days versus other days by a hen. Moreover, calcium-based blooms, which appear more powdery, are less stable than protein-based blooms and the hydration levels can influence the look of these eggs. Heavy bloom eggs look the best when they are freshly laid. From that point on, the environmental humidity, the egg hydration levels as well as contact with an eggsafe carton material for example, can affect their appearance. In posted eggs, the above can change the look of these eggs from the moment they leave our premises to the time they arrive in your hands. Lighting also affects the appearance of these eggs and how they are photographed. For all the above reasons, we do not guarantee specific shades of pinks and purples. Finally, for custom orders we may mention in writing to you “depending on availability” for specific colours. When we do, it means that we may not include a specific colour we discussed if we do not get it in the two days prior to postage. When we receive an order from you, specifically one that includes pinks and purples (though the same goes for all colours of eggs), we assume you have read all the above, and you understand and agree with it.
We strive to breed all our birds to standard. Some of our breeders will be show quality birds and some will be pet quality. Although we take every possible step to perfect each of our breeds, this is always an ongoing process and on occasion there may be suboptimal traits in offspring hatched from our eggs that may relate to faults originating many generations back, and which are not obvious in our current breeders. If something like this is noticed, we would like to be notified.
Purchase of live birds:
Live birds (e.g. chicks, pullets, ducklings, turkey poults, guineafowl keets and goslings) cannot be ordered online. You can visit us either by appointment or on our open days to purchase live birds. Feel free to contact us prior to our open days to discuss what we have available at any point in time, as the kind and number of live birds we offer fluctuates depending on the season as well as the demand.
We can only reserve birds upon full payment. Chicks on-heat can only be purchased in groups of no less than 4 to ensure the wellbeing of the chicks. We offer both sexed female chicks and unsexed chicks. The unsexed chicks can be either male or female in a ratio of 0-100%, which is beyond our control. Any sexed female chicks that have been sexed incorrectly will be either replaced (depending on availability) or the full amount of the purchase price will be refunded. Our unsexed breeds are not able to be wing-sexed and we do not have the years of specialised training required to vent-sex chicks.
All our chicks and growers are handled using our well-proven protocols for good health and hygiene, but we strongly encourage you to follow recommended procedures for the care of on-heat chicks and other hatchlings as well as for chicks that are going off-heat onto grass or soil. Transferring pullets or other off-heat birds from our property to yours may require the use of prophylactic anti-coccidiosis dosing for the first few days as a preventative measure. Although we discuss this here, the onus is on the buyers to determine the best care for the birds they purchase from us, and we hold no responsibility for that. We do not accept returns of live birds or roosters that originated from unsexed chicks you purchased from us. We typically do not provide refunds or replacements for any live birds you purchased from us, which happened to die shortly after you transferred them to their new home because we take the outmost care to offer healthy, strong birds. In such an instance, we will always discuss with you the circumstances under which this occurred to try to determine the cause of death. On occasion and when it is warranted, we will offer a replacement, but that is entirely to our discretion.
Pricing and Cancellation Policy:
Our prices are set at the beginning of each breeding season and are subject to change without prior notice. We accept payment via EFT (electronic bank transfer), in which case we require you to email us a receipt of payment so that we can process your order, credit card (online only), or cash on pick up on our open days. For any reservations of fertile eggs or live birds, full pre-payment is required. Note that on our farm reception is poor, so please do not expect to pay using EFT when you are here. We do not offer credit card facilities on site and at this stage only cash payments are available on pick up. Tax receipts are available for cash payments.
We reserve the right to deny our services, product sales or offerings to anyone at any time and without providing explanations of our reasons.
An order may only be cancelled when a written email is sent to us at least a week prior to the expected collection date or shipping date. For cancelled orders, 5% of the paid amount is not refundable, reflecting the time we have spent processing your order as well the cancellation. An order may be rescheduled at the buyer’s request to a later date.
We make every effort to keep every kind of fertile eggs we offer updated on our website as to availability. You will see eggs marked as “Sold out” when either that breed has ceased laying for the season or we are booked out for the next 4-6 weeks. This breed will go back in stock when the breeders have started laying again and we have done all necessary fertility and hatching tests or when all previous orders have been fulfilled.
There is a possibility that on our estimated dispatch date we are not able to fulfill your order for various reasons (out of season, breeders have slowed down since you placed your order due to changing weather conditions or other reasons). In this case, we will contact you with a new estimated shipping date. If that date does not work for you, we can refund you or arrange a different date that suits both you and us.
Liability and copyright:
We are not liable for any losses in relation to any sales of our products or for any advice, recommendations or information offered in this website or verbally by us. The content of this website, including text, images, videos and all other materials, is the copyrighted property of Agia Skepi Pty Ltd and no guarantees are provided for the level of accuracy of any of the content, which is subject to change and/or improvement at any time and without prior notice. Strictly no use or reproduction of any of this content (even with acknowledgment or watermarked) is allowed without written permission by us.