It started with a
“mandarin” farm.
No chickens…just citrus.
Chickens have a way of finding their way into your heart, your home, and can take over your life. Our mission is to bring data and specialists together to make you a more informed poultry owner with more positive experiences! Here’s our story…
Hi, I’m Cherryl founder, MADness orchestrator, and flock mom of our beloved feathered family.
A little bit about me: I’m in technology operations by profession, but I also manage a hobby farm in the beautiful foothills of Penryn, CA. Quick confession — I didn’t plan to be a farmer (there’s a long and fun story behind this), but in retrospect, it was a divine blessing that brought us here today. In summary, I became a farmer overnight, and if i love something, I have a habit of going ALL IN. God willing, it’s usually led me in the right path.
My ventures like my “chicken/poultry” interests, tend to be far from seasonal, and even long-term is an inaccurate description. I call it life-term. I get in, and I stay. And I don’t expect things to happen overnight. So we share with you a very special project. Please know this is all a work in progress… but I assure you - it’s not all talk. We - my team - do take action. In such a short period, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished and where we’re headed.
Nothing is ever that simple, especially when your heart runs the vision and planning.
Who would’ve known?
In expanding the “unplanned farm”, we got chickens because my daughter somehow convinced me to listen to her “business plan” to help the farm during the citrus off-season. Lesson 1, don’t underestimate the power of an 8 (turning 28) year old.
So, 2+3+4 = 50 plus chickens later… we’ve had quite an adventure.
In this journey, we feel extremely fortunate. We’ve met amazing people guiding us to a positive path. We continue to fine-tune flock management, and we just absolutely love chickens and sharing our resources - especially pointing to the people that have guided us through this amazing experience. It’s a constant learning lesson and I still find myself saying, “Why didn’t somebody tell me that?!”
I enjoy pumping my brain with data from many online sources, but I do better with hands-on help from real people. And this was the seed of MadHatchers… That desire to learn, the want to do it right. But yet - with chickens there were so many times I felt more heart-wrenching pain from falling. I wish it didn’t need to be like this, and sadly I looked around me, more people fall and make the wrong turns. I deeply wanted this to change. And this was the seed to MadHatchers.
A one week project…I thought, easy peasy!
Finally, I made the plunge to build this much-needed system. In the beginning, we were building an easy to search poultry directory, which we found was completely missing. Given I manage a software team, I was fortunate to be able to hire my trusted team to do the task. The initial project plan was to stay simple - a 1-week project.
But weeks passed, and the “directory” got accessorized with more features in the cue. Transactions, communication, alerts, MEMBER badges, and more… YES- that’s the roadmap!
So, we continue our quest today to add to the MadHatcher’s feature list. If you’re wondering how we operate today - it’s purely with the ingredients of passion to make a difference, grit, patience, and some personal start-up fumes.
In summary, this project has evolved into something larger in scale. The more we delve into the how’s and what, the closer we came to the heart of this community and the more we heard the same concerns. We uncovered gaps in the industry and ultimately started seeing a place where we truly felt like our system can make a difference.
The poultry community has been amazing with their support and hunger for this project to completely unravel. Complemented by our passionate marketing and engineering team who have worked relentlessly to build and update this living ecosystem, its become an ongoing force.
We don’t know it all, and would love your input.
To add to the brains in the mix, we’re bringing onboard experts, leaders, and passionate individuals who want to join our advisory group who share the excitement of helping us shape this platform. We humbly admit, we don’t know it all, and can use more industry experts. .
The end game is, to develop well informed communities who will not only increase awareness and education for more positive experiences, but also empower movements that will be positive game-changers for the poultry industry.
“There are distinct issues we’ve all experienced (if not heard about too often) that can use a united community and system to chip away to make changes…”
Our mission is to empower the community with education and to allow us to discern information in full, and less in parts. To advocate humane treatment of poultry. To improve poultry ownership experiences. Saying this doesn’t mean I or “we” disagree with consumption of chicken. I love me an amazing rotisserie, and I appreciate it more knowing this was farmer raised. To be clear, we love and support our homesteading friends.
But there are distinct issues we’ve all experienced (if not heard about too often) that can use a united community and system to change it, and here’s just a small list:
Chicken deaths from negligent shipping
We fully understand and respect independent and larger scale hatchers that work with a non-local market to support their poultry business and they must ship.
BUT - If local ecosystems are stronger, we’d reduce shipping to those that do this better than others and truly care to make this transaction a good experience. You see I don’t fully believe that we can’t ship outside of the area, but I do believe this should be done in limitation and with true, caring experts who know how to do this right. Therefore reducing the casualty caused from negligent shipping practices. Building up local markets has so many bio-benefits in addition to supporting our local communities. Every positive point, points to keeping your transaction here locally if possible!
Limited opportunities
How often we’ve heard that certain experienced poultry experts, want to make this their bread and butter. But they can’t or what they make barely covers their expenses.
I’ve always found this interesting because from our perspective - there is so much opportunities based on market demands. But how do we know that? I know it my gut, and rightfully so - reliable data doesn’t exist to back up my gut feeling. Unfortunately there’s no system that has tracked these to truly create a “market”. But the truth is local experts who offer poultry consultation are very much needed in all communities. It’s hard to see the full picture in these forums.
And even harder to truly generate an organized commerce community. We envision with a system like MadHatchers, we will create a greater transparency of supply and demand, thereby homesteaders and others looking to do their hobby as a side business will thrive having a better grasp on market activity. The other battle is marketing exposure. MadHatchers is commited to empowering our members with various tools and resources to bridge the supply and demand together.
Poultry disease and outbreaks - the disconnect
News needs to travel faster when an outbreak is in an area, and saturating the poultry market about serious issues about best practices about biosecurity is so important. Let’s get information moving faster to control this! Educate, advocate, eradicate.
Rooster issues that are growing (rehoming, and also the lack of knowing about how to handle an aggressive rooster).
Increasing rehoming options through increasing visibility of available rehomeable roosters, might help a nice Roo from the pot. Spreading the word — it starts there. In the future, we blissfully imagine as a community, we can come together to support the removal of Neighborhood Rooster Bans. So many are displaced from their beloved homes because of these bans. I’m curious to know if neighborhoods had ever seen a fighting power of 10,000 poultry lovers in front of city hall? Ok, fine, they might not see 10,000 or even 1,000 physically, :) but even 100 poultry lovers making a big stink about these ordinances have stronger fighting power. Higher numbers will yield higher success in overturning ANYTHING. Additionally, as an organized community we could create and manage planned Rooster Programs. There are managed cat colonies, why is it not possible to imagine managed Rooster Programs/Colonies. In numbers - we can disperse the efforts to make this happen.
Behavior issues - there are amazing people who know how to handle behavior issues, and are more than happy to help. They can offer their services on our platform.
Driving 2 hours to get chicks, when someone raises same quality next door
This is just silly… but it happens - all the time
Breeding flaws - simply put, people don’t know better and some don’t care -and that’s ok!
But buyers need a disclosure about SOPS or an easy resource to verify what they’re getting. Rating systems help to get the word out on amazing independents and breeders who do an amazing job in bettering breeds. Completing your transactions in our system helps share information about experiences, and also allows you to see a full disclosure about what you’re getting.
You breed for temperament and not for SOP - that’s ok. Just let buyers know. We aim to have a system that displays clearly what SOPs look like per breed.
Having a virtual nuclear bomb-drop on a supportive discussion group because somebody said the “S word” — is just not ok.
There are fruitful conversations, a ton of knowledge, and beneficial networking happening in various support groups on social media platforms. Losing this platform because of someone’s negligence isn’t fair to everyone else. There’s a reason why there are restrictions in social forums. Facebook, Instagram, etc - the last thing they want to do is dedicate a police for animal sales discussions.
A place to have those conversations where we have some form of that, might help mitigate these unwelcome points that keep itching to be discussed in the wrong forums. Bring rehoming conversations here on MadHatchers. All platforms can all co-exist. But a system made specifically for chickens managed by chicken people is the end goal!
education, collaboration, and organization = action.
These are just some of the issues that we’ve seen. It doesn’t mean we solve them today, or to be part of our system you have to agree with them. We hope actually you have your own set of challenges you’ll be willing to share. But to the point, we increase our chance of solving many issues someday, together, with facilitation of data and infrastructure built for action - not just complaints. As a farmer and technology person — we need the simple recipe of education, collaboration, and organization . This equals action. A community engaged to work together must exist.
We hope to evolve. You see a directory or marketplace today, but this movement is far deeper and far richer than moving these cute fluffy butts to new homes.
We are committed to the improvement of this platform and to nurture this community. We promise to always be a live person that you could reach, LIVE PEOPLE, to help you. We look forward to your partnership, whether you’re an individual, an organization/association, or a leader in this space! Talk to us...tell us how we can help. Let us know how you want to help!
Our culture is technology, but our heart is old-school customer service. And we are so passionate about building true ecosystems in this Poultry M.A.D.ness that has possessed us. Don’t let us have all the fun… join us, or just say “hi” to see what fun chicken stories we have to share.
Say “hi” to us on Facebook and Instagram — we’re always ready to chat!
