Posts

Getting ready for the 2020 year

The start of a new year for farming takes planning and being a poultry farmer you have to be ready for the spring season of orders of newly hatched chicks and ducklings. This is a time for make or break as we prepare our incubators by sanitizing, checking functions, breeding our birds, collecting eggs and setting them in the incubators and counting the days until they hatch.  During the first setting of incubators we then move on to the next set to start the a rotation of hatching and in this process we staged all of our incubators 100% full of eggs to be hatched 3 days apart from the other so we can get the most orders processed for the spring season. With each incubator full it takes 1000 eggs and with 5 incubators we hope to get a 90-95% hatch. When selling egg layers we offer $3.50 a chick for pullets (female's) And $1.25 a chick for straight run (mixed sexes) so we have to be on the ball. During this process I will set my alarm to wake up every 2 hours just to make sure the te...

The glory of being a poultry farmer

Living in the country life has always been who I am, growing up with animals, the struggles that come with being poor and the sacrifices.  My husband and I have a poultry farm, we raise chickens and ducks for the purpose of selling eggs, chick's and ducklings. We were making enough money and building our business to have a  decent living as we didn't want or need fancy things. My wardrobe consists of rubber boots, slip on washable shoes, cheap t-shirts and pretty much anything else that was simple to wash at a moment's notice. I worked sun up to sun down 365 days a year and it was my 24 hour and 7 days a week job, no vacation time here!  I would fill customers orders all hours of the day for them to come select their newly hatched babies or getting eggs for that needed breakfast in the morning. We didn't complain when a regular egg customer would call for a late night pickup of eggs as this was part of farming.  We were well known in our community for our products an...