She said/He said Who's right? Who's wrong? No one!

I candled again last night since my app reminded me it was 7 days in. All 5 of my Marans over RSL are developing. :cool:
Alright alright alright!!!!
What? Talking chickens? :smack I didn't realize we were running 2 days apart. I guess the Brinsea/Frankenbator challenge is on!
Get it!
I set on the 14th at 6pm MST.
We will be having white Russians tonight after our blue lagoons and blood marys. I will post pics!!!! Cocktail party at my house!!!!
A good friend does it, but she does not charge to do it so the financial aspects haven't been studied. She puts other's eggs in with her on since she has a large Brinsea. Firstly, the contract would have to be fairly verbose regarding "not responsible" stuff. Nobody can vouch for the state of the eggs going in, so fertility rate and hatchability are out of the question...but if that's so, then why have you hatch them at all? Assuming they can't buy day-olds (or older), there's the only reason (or somehow you are going to price yourself cheaper). The only way I could see it being profitable is if you had multiple bators and could sustain rolling hatches. So you have X bators running pre-lockdown, and enough to handle how many lockdowns you might need. My concern would be introducing new eggs to an existing hatch...how do you know what's on those new eggs? If you were sterile enough you could wash all new eggs (I've talked with people who dip their eggs in a chlorine solution before putting them in the bator, and they seem to think it works). The other concern is how to convince someone whose eggs have failed that you should still get paid. OTOH, I recently found out that queen bees need to be hatched, so offering a hatching service could extend to such things, or exotic birds, turtles, snakes, and a variety of egg laying species.
I don't think chlorine is a good idea.but that's me. I will offer hatching services as soon as I can get an excellent hatch rate.
 
A good friend does it, but she does not charge to do it so the financial aspects haven't been studied. She puts other's eggs in with her on since she has a large Brinsea.

Firstly, the contract would have to be fairly verbose regarding "not responsible" stuff. Nobody can vouch for the state of the eggs going in, so fertility rate and hatchability are out of the question...but if that's so, then why have you hatch them at all? Assuming they can't buy day-olds (or older), there's the only reason (or somehow you are going to price yourself cheaper). The only way I could see it being profitable is if you had multiple bators and could sustain rolling hatches. So you have X bators running pre-lockdown, and enough to handle how many lockdowns you might need.

My concern would be introducing new eggs to an existing hatch...how do you know what's on those new eggs? If you were sterile enough you could wash all new eggs (I've talked with people who dip their eggs in a chlorine solution before putting them in the bator, and they seem to think it works).

The other concern is how to convince someone whose eggs have failed that you should still get paid.

OTOH, I recently found out that queen bees need to be hatched, so offering a hatching service could extend to such things, or exotic birds, turtles, snakes, and a variety of egg laying species.

I have an agreement drafted. I have gotten pretty good at staggered hatches.

Fee would be per egg going in since I can't control quality. 50% up front, if they don't pay the other 50%, no chicks if any hatch.

I made up a spreadsheet that calcs lockdown and hatch dates for 12 species. I will reverse it so that it calculates set date based on scheduled hatch dates.
 
If you do it right you could be debt free sooner than you think. We are almost debt free. We just have of my student loans left and its under 4 grand and we did it in 3 years. We close to 40 grand in debt and we managed to get it all paid off except that one loan. So it's totally doable. I think I added 38 as your age for the average.
We've been debt free for years. Built our house, our cars are over 11 years old.

I have an agreement drafted. I have gotten pretty good at staggered hatches.

Fee would be per egg going in since I can't control quality. 50% up front, if they don't pay the other 50%, no chicks if any hatch.

I made up a spreadsheet that calcs lockdown and hatch dates for 12 species. I will reverse it so that it calculates set date based on scheduled hatch dates.
I like your fee schedule. It would weed out the slackers for sure.

I came home to a gal who'd been broody for about 4 days. So, I gave her 8 eggs on Sunday. This will be a re-do of my gender experiment. She's a bit loco. She was begging to get out of her broody cage yesterday, so I let her out. She ran around like a "chicken with her head cut off", acted like the whole world was out to get her, which drew the attention of the other hens, who then decided they had to get her. I had to wait for her to get over her crazy spell, then go and pluck her off the nest that I'd relocated her from, and put her back in her broody cage. So, her eggs weren't covered for 2 - 3 hours. I doubt that it makes much difference this early in the game. Haven't had a broody for about 45 years!
 
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Custom hatching...has anyone here tried it? Hatching for money? If so, how did it work out...if it did not work out well, why not?
I can write software to manage set/hatch dates so that I can fill up a bator and have only one tray hatching a week in each. Between the GQF and my homebuilt, I can incubate a lot of eggs. That would give me a reason to buy a dedicated hatcher.

No one does it around here, closest is 40 miles and only in April/May. I can run my incubator all year and it would give me an excuse to do so. It doesn't cost any more to incubate 200 eggs than it does 20.


I've seen ads around here for the service. And I'd love to do it! My SIL hatched some for a local farmer near her, he took the eggs to her, from his flock, and paid her a couple bucks each for only the ones that hatched. He didn't have an incubator and didn't want to get one. That's usually the way I see listings here.
That's the way I've seen it done as well. The client provides the eggs and pays a buck or two for each hatchling.

That has to be said right from get go. I have also heard that they split 50 50 whatever hatches.
I have seen this as well.
 
We've been debt free for years.  Built our house, our cars are over 11 years old.  

I like your fee schedule.  It would weed out the slackers for sure.  

I came home to a gal who'd been broody for about 4 days.  So, I gave her 8 eggs on Sunday.  This will be a re-do of my gender experiment.  She's a bit loco.  She was begging to get out of her broody cage yesterday, so I let her out.  She ran around like a "chicken with her head cut off", acted like the whole world was out to get her, which drew the attention of the other hens, who then decided they had to get her.  I had to wait for her to get over her crazy spell, then go and pluck her off the nest that I'd relocated her from, and put her back in her broody cage.  So, her eggs weren't covered for 2 - 3 hours.  I doubt that it makes much difference this early in the game.  Haven't had a broody for about 45 years!


Sounds like you are in for some fun! Good luck with her!
 
We've been debt free for years.  Built our house, our cars are over 11 years old.  

I like your fee schedule.  It would weed out the slackers for sure.  

I came home to a gal who'd been broody for about 4 days.  So, I gave her 8 eggs on Sunday.  This will be a re-do of my gender experiment.  She's a bit loco.  She was begging to get out of her broody cage yesterday, so I let her out.  She ran around like a "chicken with her head cut off", acted like the whole world was out to get her, which drew the attention of the other hens, who then decided they had to get her.  I had to wait for her to get over her crazy spell, then go and pluck her off the nest that I'd relocated her from, and put her back in her broody cage.  So, her eggs weren't covered for 2 - 3 hours.  I doubt that it makes much difference this early in the game.  Haven't had a broody for about 45 years!


Yep...we still have a mortgage but our vehicles are 14 and 13 years old.
 
I have an agreement drafted.  I have gotten pretty good at staggered hatches.

Fee would be per egg going in since I can't control quality.  50% up front, if they don't pay the other 50%, no chicks if any hatch.  

I made up a spreadsheet that calcs lockdown and hatch dates for 12 species.  I will reverse it so that it calculates set date based on scheduled hatch dates.

I was talking to a BYC member that did it before. I was/am interested in doing it as well. I contacted someone today on CL. They had an add for baby quail and said they would have more eventually if they could fix their incubator. So I offered to hatch for them. The BYC member said the other party supplied the eggs and she would get .50 per hatched chick.
 
I was talking to a BYC member that did it before. I was/am interested in doing it as well. I contacted someone today on CL. They had an add for baby quail and said they would have more eventually if they could fix their incubator. So I offered to hatch for them. The BYC member said the other party supplied the eggs and she would get .50 per hatched chick.


That does not seem like it would be worth it esp fir electricity and time.
 

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