The first batches of our own hatching eggs have been in the incubator for a week or so. These cabinet incubators make hatching pretty darn painless. Put the eggs in, candle them in 10 to days, remove any that didn't incubate, move the eggs into the hatching area in 18 days, pull out the chicks in 21 days and off they go to the brooding room. Six weeks later they're out on grass.
Nothing we don't eat...
I own three of these incubators. The one in the picture I just purchased new after using the two "emu" models for two years. Designed for emus and I purchased them off craigslist for $100 each. With a little bit of hardware cloth, each "emu" egg rack can hold about 18 turkey eggs or 2 dozen chicken eggs, and there are three racks per level, so an emu incubator can hold about 250 turkey eggs at a time. The woman I purchased these incubators from had paid more than $800 each for them, and she had 7 more still in their factory boxes to sell. She took a $5k loss on the belief that emus would be a good crop.
Exotic animals as a crop
I don't really get folks who think that somehow an exotic breed of animal is a good choice for a small farm. People who got into ostriches and emus and alpacas and llamas early can make a good profit. But then there's the inevitable crash. For years you couldn't GIVE an ostrich away in parts of Texas and Arizona. People would set them free on the roads. Every other exotic type of animal has gone through the same thing. Right now alpacas are popular -- but how many people eat them, or wear alpaca clothing? I sure don't.
On my own farm I only raise animals that I or others commonly eat, and by doing that it's kept me out of all of these speculative bursts. There's no way to get rich quickly off your farm.
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