I'm just curious. I have been reading the incubating section of this forum for days. When your eggs hatch, are you keeping the chicks, giving them away, selling them? Where are all the chicks going?
Hatch enough to provide enough selection to increase/replenish the flock for next year. Free range during the summer to cut food costs. Just took our second batch of roos to the processor. Once we cull the non-layers, we should have enough pullets to have SOME selection of who to keep over winter. The extra pullets we will Craigslist. We have decided to eliminate the EEs but hope we have a couple olive eggers in the new ones. Having unique breeds helps in selling extras but that's not the reason we have them.
Thanks for replies! Eventually I would like to incubate eggs for layers and meat birds as we plan on homesteading, but now is not the time I guess. My husband is a Marine with 22 years active duty probably going to do a full 30 before retiring and then we can find somewhere to settle down. We would like to live at least 90% off our land one day so we are trying to perfect techniques and see what works for us. Already trying aquaponics, but fish are really easy to rehome. I've learned chicks, especially roo's (another story for another day) are not so I was curious what my options were. I do believe for now I'll just stick with what I'm doing... 8 more years can try incubating.
Good question. I have my first hatch in the bator right now - and I won't be able to keep the roos. I figure Craigslist - or some other local BYC'ers who are into breeding and/or processing. I'll keep all - or at least most - of the pullets.
I agree with the other posts, I keep some and sell some and give some away. Most of my hatches turn out around 50/50 females and males. Some hatches may be more girls and some may be more boys. My birds are all dual purpose breeds. Once in awhile when I get an excessive amount of males I take them to my local auction.
The nice Hispanic man down the road seems thrilled to take my spare roos, and I did verify he doesn't fight them. 'not sure' what he does with em, but I'm guessing they done have a big retirement coop down their besides the freezer or stock pot.
