Welcome To The Busy Season!

Chick days, busy season, and spring are all synonymous with baby chicks and ducklings. If you thought the Easter bunny was the star of the show in spring, you’ve never worked in agriculture. This is our big show, the thing we’ve worked all year towards to make your new flock successful.

Every year at Meyer Hatchery, those of us who’ve worked here for a while get really excited for the busy season. We look forward to seeing old friends walk back through our door and look forward to teaching the newbies a few of our tricks to fall in love with a new hobby.

In addition, we have our regulars. These are the people we look forward to chatting with for a few minutes when we are not so crazy busy. They still take the time to ask about our kids, spouses, and pets during this crazy time. Our regulars are definitely the reason why I love working in agriculture so much. They care about us as we care about them. That’s the beauty of a family owned business. We are not just the people who sell them their feed or answer questions about their flocks,   we are all connected by a love of our chickens.

Chick season even smells different. It’s spring rain, mixed with baby chicks with a dash of the smell of cleaners in a humid room while the staff is washing all the supplies to get ready for the next week. It’s spectacular. If you are familiar with any smell that makes you feel at home, even if that’s inside of your barn, you get me. It’s definitely a happy place just like my own home.

The whole hatchery, including the store and breeder barns, are full go. It takes a lot of work for us all to stay on top of everything. Every day is a different step in the process, moving to the beginning again. Monday is hatch day, which means there are chicks hatching, orders being packed, chicks picked up in the store, bin chicks, and the feed. Large amounts of feed loaded. Last year we loaded 599,050 bags of feed in the drive-thru.

Not too many people look forward to Mondays, but we definitely do because it’s hatch day! Tuesdays are for restocking, cleaning. fulfilling the hatching egg orders and box building.

Wednesdays and Thursdays are a great day to visit the store if you are looking for a little more one-to-one time to ask questions. This might be a day we all slow down and catch our breath.  At this point, we are still cleaning and restocking through the week as it’s always necessary, but we definitely have more time to spend with you.

We get to Friday and we have feed deliveries, and egg setting and transferring. This is pretty awesome to watch. Saturday is reserved for errands for our locals and family trips to see what we have left in our bins. Last but not least we put the final touches on for Monday. It’s really a full circle to the big show. 

If you have never been to the Meyer Hatchery retail store in Polk, OH, we’d love to meet you. If you have, we can’t wait to see you again and we hope we can help you love your chickens as much as we love ours.