I have always preferred hatching my own chickens over buying them. Our first flock was hatched at home, and then we added 2 hens to the mix a few months later. You can usually find local fertilized eggs although you may not always be able to get a specific breed.

When we started building our flock we were lucky enough to have someone near us that raised seramas and we bought 18 eggs. Only 2 hatched and both were rootsers. They were probably my favorite birds. Tiny little cocky bastards that had no fear.

One problem with buying eggs from randos is that you have no idea what kind of rooster fertilized the eggs, so if for example you want an easter egger, you might see a nice blue egg and think oh that'll be pretty and find out later it's just laying regular brown or white eggs.

You also end up with a pretty even mix of males to females, so you have to decide how to handle that. You don't want too many males or everybody gets abused (including the males). So you're either going to have to eat them or sell them. (side note you can find free or very cheap roosters from people who just want to get rid of them [because selling roosters is harder than selling hens] if you are comfortable with the culling process. Young roosters are good food for you or your dogs. Older roosters are good for soup or dogfood only. I once got 18 roosters for 0 dollars)