Making money... Hatching & Raising Baby Chicks

Our first try on chicken hatchery, we only had: 

• 1 Americana rooster 
• 8 Rhode Island Red hens 

Out of 20 eggs that we tried to hatch in our incubator, only 3 chicks hatched. (One of them was black with a white belly, and the rest were brownish/reddish white.) 

A month later, we hatched another batch of chicks from our incubator. This time, we had: 

• 1 Americana rooster
• 1 Rhode Island Red rooster
• 8 Rhode Island Red hens

Almost all the chicks hatched when we had both roosters. We incubated around 20 eggs and 16 of those hatched into chicks. 

• 11 were black chicks, 
• 1 was was brownish white
• 4 chicks were reddish yellow 

Selling our Chicks

We put the chicks for sale on Craigslist and Facebook. After trying both, we got more calls and messages from Facebook. Facebook also has a quicker response time.

When the first batch of chicks were 5 weeks old, and the second batch of chicks were 1 week old, we finally got a buyer! 

We charged: 

• $10 for each 5 week old chick

First batch of chicks, 4 weeks old

• $5 for each week old chicks





2nd batch of chicks... 1 week old



• So they paid a total of $90 dollars. 

(We kept the 4 Rhode Island Red chicks to increase our flock of hens.) 

The buyer paid more money than what we spent on them! Yeah! Success!!

Our Mistake

But we found out too late that we needed 2 roosters. We culled (ate) our Americana rooster so we could have all Rhode Island Red chicks. Big mistake, because now we can't find another Rhode Island Red rooster.

We can't wait to hatch some more, but we don't want to waste electricity running our incubator with only one rooster. With two rooster's, almost all the eggs hatch... and our hens aren't laying as now in winter. As soon as we get a Rhode Island Red rooster, we'll be back in business!

Advertising Idea

We live on a pretty busy road, so we are trying to make use of that. We are making a sign to put by the road with all the things that we are selling. 

Bad Timing?

Right now (End of February, early March), not many people are interested in buying chicks... 

• It's winter, and people don't want to have chicks in their house. 

• Our local store just got a shipment of chicks. 

• A lot of people don't want to mess with raising chicks, they want laying pullets.  

We also made some YouTube video's on our chicks.... 

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to our channel :)

If you hatch and raise your own chickens, you'll end up with some feathers laying round...especially if you butcher some of your chickens. We made a post about why, and how to clean chicken feathers, or whatever feathers you have. 

https://singleincomeliving.blogspot.com/2019/02/cleaning-feathers-preparing-feathers.html