Hatching Chicks - A Quick Overview

Gday there and welcome to this brief overview of the Hatching Chicks program. We are delighted that you have chosen us to conduct our egg incubation at your facility and I do hope this is the beginning of a wonderful long-term relationship. The purpose of this video is to give you a general understanding of how we operate and we will go into much greater detail later in specialist videos.

Hatching Chicks is a 12 day program unless there are any public holidays that interfere with the schedule. We usually deliver on a Monday and collect on the Friday of the second week. About a week before the delivery date we will send you an email to confirm the booking and finalise your address and contact details. Please ensure that you give us the contact details of the person who will be meeting us in the morning rather than a head office number.

If you do give us a mobile number then we will send an sms to this account which will provide the recipient with our planned arrival time and they can track us to see how we are progressing - just like a courier tracking app. This way you’ll never need to call us to find out where the driver is as it will always be at your fingertips.

When the driver arrives, please provide them with a table that's at least one meter long by half a meter wide. The table will need to be located within a meter of a double power point or please organise an extension cord and a power board if the power point is not close by. It’s great to have it somewhere where you can supervise it easily and where there's a fair bit of room so that a small crowd of people can stand around and see what's happening.

There are three other points to consider (other than access to power) when finding a location for your program - you cannot place it in a location that gets direct sunlight, you cannot place it near a heater and you cannot place it under an air conditioning unit. Try to choose a spot that has a fairly stable temperature throughout the day.

Now, if all goes according to plan we will arrive sometime between 7am and 2pm at your facility. Our normal program consists of 8 chicks and 3 ducklings - one or two of the chicks will be up to 24 hours old and the remainder should hatch before Thursday. The ducklings should hatch about half way into the program. The reason that the ducklings hatch so late is that they grow really quickly and poop a lot so sometimes less is more.

Now, if one or two eggs do not hatch that is completely normal and most likely not caused by anything that happens at your end. Any chicken eggs that have not hatched by Friday afternoon can be discarded, and any Duck eggs that have not hatched by the following Wednesday can also be discarded. Simply wrap them in a tissue and put them in the bin.

Now what happens over the weekend? You have 2 options - either someone can take them home for the weekend or a member of staff can come in on the weekend to look after them. In case you are wondering, it is quite safe to transport them in the perspex brooder provided it is not too cold - just make sure to take the water out prior to transport to avoid spills.

Now at the end of the program we will collect all of the equipment and hatchlings. If any person wishes to purchase the hatchlings please refer them to our website to complete the Adoption Application and finalise their purchase. They will need to complete this paperwork by no later than the Wednesday before we collect the equipment. We can also supply them with any feed or equipment they need in order to look after the birds.

Now at the end of the program do make sure that the children have had enough time to say goodbye to the chicks. You will receive an SMS from us detailing the time of the collection - we try to collect all programs between 9am and 5pm on the collection day.

Now for all your other questions - especially in relation to where the eggs come from, what type of chickens they are and where they go at the end of the program please refer to our other videos.