Years ago, my big thing was tropical salt and fresh water fish. I had a 100 gallon salt tank and a 150 gallon fresh tank. One winter, we had the wind storm of all wind storms for the Pacific NW. Knocked out our power for eleven days. No! I'm NOT exaggerating!
ELEVEN DAYS!
We were most fortunate that our next door neighbor had a generator big enough to power both homes, for just the necessities. For us that meant the pellet stove [I'll personally never own another one TYVM!] the fridge and the tanks.
Unfortunately, 4 days into the power outage, the neighbors POS generator crapped out. It was a constant struggle to keep it running after that.
Ever try to find a generator when half of the state is also looking for one? Needle in a haystack! Long story short, on the eleventh day, after a week of searching endlessly, chewing my fingernails down to the quick, and jumping out of my skin each time we heard the neighbors POS generator cough and sputter, we found one! At of all places, K-mart! Bought it right then and there, ran home with it, fired it up and breathed a huge sigh of relief to see the tank heaters and all flicker back to life.
A half hour later, our other neighbor knocked on the door to tell us that the power was back on.
We didn't know because we had thrown the main breaker out on the meter so as not to electrocute anyone working on the lines.
Since then, that little generator, just a 2.5 kw, has been our life line on more than one occasion. Kathy, even a small 1kw genny should be more than enough to power at least the incubators and the brooders. Come spring, watch Craig's List for them. They'll be dirt cheap at that point.
