Wednesday, May 1, 2024
We ship our duckling via United States Postal Service because the USPS is the only agency that will ship live animals in America. FedEx and UPS will not deliver ducklings to your doorstep although FedEx planes do work in conjunction with the USPS in transporting live animals such as ducklings by air across the country.
We commonly get this question: Why does Metzer Farms ship ducklings via USPS Priority Mail? Isn’t Express Mailing quicker and in the better interest of the waterfowl? Good question! The answer is in the numbers.
The following statistics were gathered from Metzer Farms shipping data from January 2025 through May 2026. We looked at how long a delivery took to get from our hatchery to our customer’s local post office. 2-day delivery means the birds are mailed one day and arrive two days later (ie: mailed Monday and arrive Wednesday). This included over 180,000 priority shipments and 1,554 express shipments. The results we found were very interesting:
We commonly get this question: Why does Metzer Farms ship ducklings via USPS Priority Mail? Isn’t Express Mailing quicker and in the better interest of the waterfowl? Good question! The answer is in the numbers.
The following statistics were gathered from Metzer Farms shipping data from January 2025 through May 2026. We looked at how long a delivery took to get from our hatchery to our customer’s local post office. 2-day delivery means the birds are mailed one day and arrive two days later (ie: mailed Monday and arrive Wednesday). This included over 180,000 priority shipments and 1,554 express shipments. The results we found were very interesting:
Here are some important take aways from this chart:
• The vast number of shipments are by Priority Mail.
• Notice that 91% of both Priority and Express Mail arrived within two days.
• Surprisingly, more shipments arrived within one day with Priority Mail! (That could be because the customers selecting Express were in more remote locations that could never be reached within a day.)
• There is no benefit of one shipping method over the other when looking at transit time of 3 days or more.
The reason you can mail an Express Mail envelope and it takes one day but live animals take two days is because of what else is on the plane. Express Mail is flown and sorted at night. Many FedEx planes which are flown at night also carry dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) for medical supplies. You cannot carry live animals with dry ice so live animals are held until the next morning and put on morning flights. These morning flights are the exact same flights used for Priority Mail.
In summary, this data confirms why we recommend to our customers that they use Priority Mail over Express. Not only is it quicker, but it is also much cheaper - 35 dollars cheaper per package to be exact! We continually remind customers that Express Shipping does not guarantee overnight arrival. In fact, quite the opposite is true, in some cases, we see Express shipments take longer. A transit delay is not good for the welfare and health of our birds.
• The vast number of shipments are by Priority Mail.
• Notice that 91% of both Priority and Express Mail arrived within two days.
• Surprisingly, more shipments arrived within one day with Priority Mail! (That could be because the customers selecting Express were in more remote locations that could never be reached within a day.)
• There is no benefit of one shipping method over the other when looking at transit time of 3 days or more.
The reason you can mail an Express Mail envelope and it takes one day but live animals take two days is because of what else is on the plane. Express Mail is flown and sorted at night. Many FedEx planes which are flown at night also carry dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) for medical supplies. You cannot carry live animals with dry ice so live animals are held until the next morning and put on morning flights. These morning flights are the exact same flights used for Priority Mail.
In summary, this data confirms why we recommend to our customers that they use Priority Mail over Express. Not only is it quicker, but it is also much cheaper - 35 dollars cheaper per package to be exact! We continually remind customers that Express Shipping does not guarantee overnight arrival. In fact, quite the opposite is true, in some cases, we see Express shipments take longer. A transit delay is not good for the welfare and health of our birds.
Ground shipping:
If a customer lives within around 250 miles of the hatchery the post office will use Ground shipping to deliver their mail. Changing from Ground to Priority, on a box of live shipments within 250 miles of the hatchery will ONLY change the postage price, it will not impact how these birds move from our hatchery to the customer. They will still be trucked, because that is their assigned pathway through the system when a customer is within our ground network.
