I have a bird room (hatchery) inside and another brooder room in our shop (which has not been used for awhile) because I separated them in order to do NPIP (which I have not done yet due to the code change limiting my long term plans as I am unable to replace roosters once the boys I have now are gone). I do hatch year round but not as much over the winter. I would rather sell chicks as babies than raising them but I do raise them as well so I can keep the nicest ones, which is the point of hatching after all. We have been talking about just keeping ducks and selling off the chickens since the ducks are so low maintenance and we love them more than the chickens, which were originally intended to hatch duck eggs but we have incubators that do a better job.
My break from hatching taught me that we don't really need to keep chickens for hatching eggs but we might keep the Easter Eggers in order to have eating eggs if the Easter Eggers from our Quechua rooster turn out the way I hope. There is one that looks like a rooster with such beautiful colors while some look too much like the father with mostly buff feathering. I have had a hen sitting on eggs for far too long, I think so I am not sure if her time off from laying will even be productive.
So many hens have gone broody but they are young things that don't seem to be dedicated enough to hatch anything. I have to kick them all off their nests to get them fattened up again before it gets colder at night.
