Small Farm Chicken Hatchery

If you don’t have a lot of space to raise out chicks but have a plentiful fertile egg supply, consider starting a chicken hatchery.  The time and space involved are minimal if you can turn chicks around within a couple of days of hatching.  This works particularly well if you breed harder to find and rare chicken breeds.  Chickens that produce colored eggs have been and will continue to be popular as a niche market.

Chicken Hatchery Initial Investment

Your startup cost will vary depending on the scale.  Do you want to start by selling eggs your own hens hatch or do you plan to hatch large quantities?  There’s a space somewhere in between too.  One of the pros to this income idea is how scalable it is.  You can choose to start small, growing naturally as your flock increases, or you can put extra cash into buying an incubator and brooding setup to get a bigger start as a full-fledged (get it?) chicken hatchery.  A starter incubator will cost about $150-$250 with accessories; expect to pay in the thousands for a commercial setup. Continue reading “Small Farm Chicken Hatchery”

Turn Waste into Gold by Selling Compost

Selling compost is one of those unexpected benefits of raising livestock. It helps to imagine I’m walking through liquid gold when the muck of winter starts to melt. If you happen to have any to spare–we never do–it’s a great way to add an extra cash flow from something you might otherwise spend a lot of time trying to manage and move out of the way.

There’s a high demand for all kinds of compost: leaves, grass clippings, animal manure, etc. If you can combine these into a finished compost, you can command a higher price. Continue reading “Turn Waste into Gold by Selling Compost”