Tips on opening a hatchery.

[maybejoey]

Thankyou so much everyone. Lots of tips that will help me a lot. It was just a idea though. Well until I get enough money to pay for all of the stuff I will need.

 

[Colie <3]

My advice, for what it's worth is: to start small as just a breeder of your favorites. See if you like the challenge of it all and move on from there. You probably should start networking with other breeders local or semi-local to yourself as well. They can be a great resource with many things chicken related. Also in the future should you choose to move on with becoming an actual hatchery you may be able to work out a contract with them to help you with supplying eggs/stock. I think many people see the venture of being a small scale hatchery as an easy deal. I however would not agree. Lots and lots of work and it will take a lot of resources.

Website wise you have a lot of options especially if you're ok with a computer and have some time to throw at designing your own site. Your first step in this situation would be to get some good high quality pictures of your birds and the like. Intuit is ok in my opinion for about $20 a month you can get a .com of your own and it has a decently user friendly web page builder for you to use. I also would recommend if you have a Mac looking at the iWeb program. I haven't used it much other than to play around but it is very user friendly. The idea overall is to get a quality site up with an easy to remember URL. Also a plus would be if you could skip having the distracting advertisements on your page that many free services stick you with.

Logo wise look here on BYC there are a few talented members that do design logos for a decent price.

Name of your venture should be simple and easy to remember. Try to think of something you can utilize now as a hobbyist breeder (if that is the route you choose) as well as a name you can use later on if you want to expand. If you could give some idea of what type of birds you will be focusing on maybe you could get some suggestions?

Also incubation wise, I say go ahead and save your nickels and dimes for a cabinet incubator and skip the whole Styrofoam thing as much as possible. Yes, they can be cheaper and many do work well but they also get pretty gross looking over the course of only a year IMHO. Keep an eye out for a second hand incubator on craigslist.com or here on BYC. Educate yourself about incubation and hatching as much as possible so you can make a good decision on which type and capacity to buy especially if you want it to grow with you. Also when buying used you'll need to be able to determine if the unit is functioning properly and/or how to fix it if it isn't. Ask to see the incubator up and running before you purchase if possible. I'm sorry to say not everyone is honest!

Best of luck to you with whatever you decide to do!