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 temperature and humidity are good and that all turners are going just fine. As we get closer to hatching day we start to pull all the plastic totes out get them sanitized and set up for the chicks. As we line them up (we never use the lids)
A long the walls marked for each incubator, the breed and date hatched and then start to prepare boxes for orders.

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