Continuous hatching. How often do/would you set eggs?

The Moonshiner

Fixin' to get in trouble, you comin'? 🛸 🏴‍☠️
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Nov 17, 2016
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I continuously hatch eggs all summer and into the fall. In the past I always set eggs once a week.. Just so hatches happened on my days off of work. Now I'm working shorter days but 6 or 7 days a week so really don't need to worry about what days they would hatch on.
I use a separate hatcher so no worries about staggered hatches etc.
Brooders isn't an issue either. When I mentioned that it is said that eggs can be stored 10 days someone asked why I don't just switch to setting eggs every 10 days. That would be less work setting eggs, moving eggs to hatcher, moving chicks, cleaning hatcher, moving chicks in brooders etc.
My thought was duh that's 10 days between new chicks. Who would want to do that? So then it was asked then why not set eggs every day? My thoughts were well lets not get out of hand I love new chicks but that's work every day.
So what are your thoughts? What do you or would you do and why?
Just curious if I'm missing some things I haven't thought about while rethinking all of this.
 
Wow! What do you do with all those chicks or chickens when they grow up, since the odd also of hatching way too many roos? I’d been hatching since March, out of 11 only 3 hens. I did Easter hatch along, sold 5 and out of 10 left looks like half will be roos. My broody hatched 6 chicks few days ago and I got 30 eggs hatching in my 2 Brinsea due a day or 2.
 
I don't have a lot of birds to breed from, so I wait until I have a sufficient number, i.e. no sets of only 2 or 3 eggs. I don't have a very big incubator so there's also space constraints. It ends up being about a week in between sets. That's also an ideal timeframe for my brooder space. I can group a few batches, and then by the time they run out of space, they're old enough to go to the outdoor brooders, just in time for the next birds to need it.
 
Lol. I don't hatch roos. Roos are a pain in the @$$. D@mn things hop 6' fences and are always wanting to box or kick. They all need to go back to the outback where they belong.
But as for cockerels/roosters I find a lot of value in them. Although I keep about 3 to 1 hens to roosters they are just as important to me and my breeding.
I sometime keep unneeded hens just for our laying flock but I do produce a lot of birds I don't need. We have a chicken auction in my area once a month and my unwanted birds mostly go there.
Sometimes I give hens to people so they can have their own layers and/or roosters to families to eat.
 

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