SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP - There were baskets of chicks - soft yellow mounds of down; and mallard ducklings - mottled browns with miniature bills. There were white and bronze turkey poults and a basket of baby ringneck pheasants.
Rob O'Hara opened the door of a huge hatcher, and peering out at the world for the first time were trays of Cornish rock cross chicks. He pulled out a tray, and among the chicks that could fit in the palm of a hand were the cracked shells of brown eggs.
Mr. O'Hara is the third generation of the O'Hara family that has run Mount Healthy Hatcheries since 1924. Begun with an incubator in the basement of Hugh "Chick" O'Hara's home, it passed to his son, Bob O'Hara, and on to two of Bob's sons, Rob and Jeff O'Hara.
And it has grown to where 3 million eggs a year are hatched here at the Winton Road facility, where farmland has since turned into suburbia. "There was nothing here when I was a kid," said Bob O'Hara. Almost five years ago, a fire destroyed the building, but the small business rebounded.
They rebuilt from the November 1992 fire. It is a seasonal business, running from February to September, and at its height, they hatch 70,000 chicks twice a week, 4,000 turkey poults and 4,000 ducklings once a week.
Sherry O' Hara loads chicks into shipping boxes Wednesday at Mount Healthy Hatcheries.
(Kevin J. Miyazaki photo)
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Most of their business is mail-order, from feed stores and small farmers, and as such, theirs is one of maybe two in the state of Ohio, producing more than a dozen breeds of chicks, as well as turkey poults, ducklings and pheasants.
"Don't confuse us with the commercial hatcheries," said Bob O'Hara. "I don't think there's more than a dozen hatcheries in the mail-order business in the country. But the small farmers have to get their chicks somewhere. You go to the hills and dales of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, and there's lots of them."
They get most of their eggs from a farm in Evansville, Ind. The eggs are placed in 10 incubators for 18 days, where they are turned several times a day to keep the yolk from sticking to the shell, and where the temperature hovers at 99.5 degrees and humidity is 86 percent.
For the last three days, the eggs are placed in the hatcher. After the chicks hatch, they are placed in baskets, sexed, boxed up according to the orders, taken by truck to the post office in Queensgate and shipped out by mail. Within 48 hours, their customers have their chicks.
"We get 'em out fresh," said Bob O'Hara. "We pull 'em and get 'em in the mail."
Mature chicks are used for egg production, meat and for show, said Rob O'Hara. Pheasants and mallard ducks may end up on game farms and preserves. About 2,000 feed dealers around the country buy from Mount Healthy Hatcheries, and the feed dealers then sell the chicks to their customers.
"They handle the chicks because it helps them sell feed and products," said Rob O'Hara.
He said they also take orders from individual farmers who don't have the facilities to incubate and hatch eggs, and find buying chicks much more convenient. "It's much easier for them to call us once a year," said Rob O'Hara.
How much poultry have they hatched out over the course of seven decades?
"Millions and millions," he said as he picked some errant chicks from the floor of the hatcher and placed them back in their tray.
