Thousands of baby chicks begin their lives on one Jackson County, Iowa, farm every week. Within a day or two they are delivered to their new homes in family backyards or chicken coops from Alaska to Maine.
Schlecht Hatchery, of Miles, is hatching and shipping more than 5,000 chicks every Tuesday. Hatching started in mid-January and will end in late October, but no chicks will be shipped during the hottest weeks of the summer.
It's an operation that has changed little in more than 50 years. Etta (Schlecht) Culver, 48, manages the hatchery her father started. Her extended family all help out at one time or another.
For instance, her 69-year-old mother, Rosalee, washes eggs for hours daily in sudsy sinks, and the sole employee is a neighbor. Other neighbors raise Schlecht chickens on their farms and bring in the eggs for hatching.
While hatching poultry eggs seems like a simple concept, it is exacting, painstaking work that the family has honed to a science.
How it's done
Eggs are carefully placed by the thousands onto
The hatchery Schlecht Hatchery is located nine miles south of Bellevue, just off U.S. 52 on 500th Avenue. Find the hatchery online at www.schlechthatchery.com Chicken wisdom "The secret of happy living is not to do what you like, but to like what you do." Richard Sr. Founder of Schlecht Hatcherythe hatchery Schlecht Hatchery is located nine miles south of Bellevue, just off U.S. 52 on 500th Avenue. Find the hatchery online at www.schlechthatchery.com Chicken wisdom "The secret of happy living is not to do what you like, but to like what you do." Richard Sr. Founder of Schlecht Hatchery |
On hatching day, as the chicks crack out of their shells, they are scooped up into basket racks where they are sorted by type and "sexed" if necessary. It takes an expert eye to tell the difference between tiny wing feathers on male and female chicks, but Culver does it in a glance.
Many customers, like a Missouri Amish community, only want pullets to lay eggs. In a mixed order, roosters are often butchered later for their meat.
Hatching day
Several hours after a hatch, the main hatching room is a sweet cacophony of cheeps from thousands of tiny throats.
The chicks, huddled into piles of soft fluff, dry off under warming lights. Culver and her helpers put handfuls of tiny chicks into specialized shipping boxes -- each addressed.
By this time, Culver has notified the local post office and phoned a list of ZIP codes to staff at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
This day, shipments are headed to 12 ZIP codes, including Zumbrota and Mankato, Minn.,
Des Moines and Pomeroy in Iowa and towns in Maine, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Indiana.
"The boxes are premeasured for the post office. They are trucked to nearby states and flown to farther away states," explains Culver, who belongs to the Bird Shippers of America. "We seldom lose a single bird."
Baby chicks must arrive at their new homes within 72 hours -- they can survive on their yolks for that long after hatching.
Workers load the boxes into two vans, each headed to a different post office. At the Miles Post Office, the postmaster quickly and efficiently weighs each box. Marie Culver, 22, makes note of the costs to bill the customers.
A little chicken
These days, Schlecht Hatchery is filling more orders for smaller flocks, about 20 or 30 chicks instead of hundreds.
"People who have never tried raising chickens before are starting to. They want the fresh eggs for themselves and to sell to their neighbors," Culver said.
"It helps their budget, it's good exercise and it's something the family can do together."
Brown eggs are in great demand and 80 percent of Schlecht's customers ask for hens that lay brown or eggs of other colors.
Many customers place orders on the business' Web site, www.schlechthatchery.com, but local customers enjoy stopping in to pick out a poultry mix.
The retail room usually is full of racks of noisy, fluffy chicks, ducklings and baby turkeys.
But handling thousands of eggs every day has had an unexpected consequence for the Schlecht clan. Culver can't stand to look at them outside of work for months at a time.
"During the hatching season, there isn't an egg in my house," she said.
