Our Story
Welcome to Gerties Nest Box
A family owned farm raising chickens and quail and providing day old chicks, eggs for both hatching and eating. We also custom build incubators and poultry related products for the backyard flock owner.
When we got our first batch of chickens we started to name them there was Annabelle who was the most friendly chick I have ever owned, she always wanted to be picked up and held and petted. Well as they grew up they all started to look the same to me and I started calling them all Gertie as in “OK Gertie time to get back in the coop” and Gertie just stuck and all of my girls respond to the name. Of course the roosters didn’t care for the name so they all get their own names! So when it came time to name our farm and business Gertie’s Nest Box was the only name that made sense to us.
We are a small family farm raising chickens and quail. We started out just getting some chickens to provide us with eggs for the table, then decided that we wanted a few for breeding. Well chicken math took over and we now have 8 different breeds of chicken! Needless to say we have more eggs than we can eat. Family and friends started to get eggs and before we knew it, BAM!!! We were in the egg selling business. We are always proud when our customers tell us how good our eggs are when they come back for more.
Someone told me how much healthier quail eggs are, so I started researching and ended up ordering 50 quail eggs to hatch of which 23 hatched and became our breeder stock. We have a few hundred quail now and again too many eggs for us to consume. BAM!!! We are now in the quail eggs selling business. We sell quail eggs for eating and hatching and we even produce our own pickled quail eggs.
Hatching chicks was so much fun that I broke down and bought a new incubator (But, honey it will be fun, you’ll see) that held 22 chicken eggs at a time or about 50 quail eggs. Wow! I thought I hit the big time, but NO, I needed more capacity (really honey just a few more chicken will be fun, you’ll see). I started looking at cabinet incubators and was floored by the prices. So being the handyman that I am I decided I can build it cheaper than that, and a new venture started. I now build custom incubators for people, to their exact specifications. My incubator can hold 880 chicken eggs or 2210 quail eggs (see honey isn’t this fun?)
This has been a wild, fun adventure, I love interacting with my chickens and enjoy their individual personalities. I still act like a little kid as hatch day approaches and can’t wait to watch those little fluffy butts push their way out of the shell and see the world for the first time.
Long story short my hobby has turned into a passion (or obsession, my wife would say) and we would love to share the joy with you!
Thank you for reading and we look forward to serving your backyard poultry needs going forward,
Gertie, Judy, and Bob