The catalog is from Muarry McMurray Hatchery of Webster city, Iowa. (http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/) McMurray has been in the chicken business since 1917. Also Iowa is close to Wisconsin so my chicks would have a short trip through the U.S post office.
For my egg birds I choose 12 Rhode Island Reds. They lay brown eggs with the female mature weight at 6.5 lbs. Known as a “dual purpose bird”, meaning they can be used for stew & stock when they have matured to the molting stage. Molting stage is when they lose their feathers and stop laying eggs. At that point it becomes cost prohibitive to keep then longer. So they become stew chickens. 
Then for my meat bird, I went with the Jumbo Cornish X Rock because they mature very fast. For the females it is at 9 weeks and then they are ready for the freezer or frying pan, now that’s fast. So I called the 1-800-number to place a order they were very nice and friendly and knowledgeable. I got the order I wanted the only snag, was going to take a month longer than expected because their business was booming and all orders were behind. I knew I should have ordered sooner. {Note to self ~ order after Jan 1 when the new catalog comes out. Don’t wait} If you call them they will mail you a catalog for free.
My delivery date was May 26th, the day after Memorial day. I went to the post office a few days earlier and told them I was expecting a shipment of live chicks, like the catalog instructed, even gave then my cell#, everything. That morning came and I got in my car with my morning coffee, which I had to order online from Boca Raton, FL because once you start drinking fresh ground whole bean hand selected from the top 2% of the finest Arabica bean worldwide, it's kind hard to drink Folgers.
I get to the post office and inquire about my delivery and the postal worker says. "Nope, nothing here". I was almost in tears on the way home knowing my chicks were out there some where in the postal system and they needed me (and I was so disappointed). I went back to the coop to check the temperature. I needed 90 degrees under the brooder lamp which is raised just 12 to 14 inches from the floor. Good! Ok, I checked for possible security weakness. Just the day before I left the door opened and found a snake in the coop. And not just any snake, this was a Eastern Massasauga Rattler
(http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/critter/reptile/massasauga.htm) a rare and endangered snake (though we didn’t know that at the time) "in my chicken coop". The first time I found it, my wife removed it and threw it in the grass outside. Now it was back and I had to act fast to neutralize the threat. I grabbed my trusty rock shovel, the one with a straight edge, and I decapitated the snake without hesitation. Sorry snake you only get one ‘get out of coop free’ pass. It was after this that we found out it was a rare snake and that we probably should have taken a picture of it and moved it further away.That afternoon my mailperson knocked on my door and said, “We have chickens for you. The # we had for you didn’t work, but I told them I’d stop by and let you know”. I jumped in the car and was gone so fast I almost hit our mail lady. I got to the office and the postal worker said that they were peeping earlier, but that they must be sleeping cuz the box had been quiet. I set them in the passenger seat next to me and assured them everything was going to be ok now "Daddy's Here".
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