Hatching Chicks (VIDEO)

Hey guys. Here at the homestead, we are learning and investing in new ways to make money off of the homestead. Back in 2012 we bought an egg business from a family that had to quickly, and without much warning, move out of state. We bought their remaining stock of hens and began adding to them. At one point we had over 700 egg laying hens and we were getting into meat chickens with 300 broilers.

We bought the 300 broilers in late July and early August of 2015, and then a massive fire came thru our area, that August, surrounding our home and out buildings within 20-50 feet. We had a tuff time evacuating all those chickens, but we did have some great families in our community (some I did not know) show up to help. We evacuated all the broiler chicks and about 1/3 of the egg laying hens. We lost all but a dozen or so broiler chicks due to stress of the move, and all but 150 of the 1,000 chickens we had died due to stress, bad air quality for many weeks with high and dangerous volumes of smoke in the area. That fall and winter we slaughtered the last of our chickens. That fire knocked us down (and knocked the wind right out of us).

When I was building up our flock, I bought several small commercial incubators. Those incubators have been sitting in our basement collecting dust these past 3 years doing nothing. My son asked if we could start one up and hatch some eggs this year, so we did. He has been putting every egg in there he can, and now we are steadily hatching out chicks. He has been obsessed with chickens most of his life, and loves working with them every day.

(Caleb about 6 years ago)

Here we are learning and teaching how to candle and incubate eggs to get the most out of them as possible.

I hope you enjoyed watching the video and learned as much as we did making the video.

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Have yourself a great day