On a fish or poultry hatchery, you supervise hatchery operations — overseeing hatchery technicians, managing the daily and seasonal cycles of egg incubation and animal-rearing, and the senior operational work behind hatchery-team supervision.
Most days mix team supervision, hatchery-operation oversight, and the steady cadence of biological-system work — sitting with hatchery technicians on the day's work, monitoring environmental controls (water quality for fish, temperature and humidity for poultry), responding to disease and biosecurity issues, supporting senior management on production planning. Survival rates, growth-class progression, and team performance shape the visible measures.
What gets demanding is the always-on biological-stewardship dimension — hatchery operations depend on continuous environmental control, and supervisors carry operational accountability for systems that can fail rapidly (oxygen-depletion events for fish, disease outbreaks for poultry). Variance is wide: commercial poultry hatcheries (Tyson, Pilgrim's, Cobb-Vantress) run with industrial-scale operations; fisheries hatcheries run with state-and-federal stocking-program structures; aquaculture hatcheries run with commercial fish-and-shellfish focus.
The role tends to fit folks who carry biology-and-husbandry training, supervisory craft, and the steady disposition that biological-system stewardship requires. Animal-science or fisheries-biology credentials and growing hatchery-management experience anchor advancement. The trade-off is the on-call dimension that biological supervision requires and the cumulative responsibility of carrying biological-system outcomes.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Agriculture roles →On a fish or poultry hatchery, you supervise hatchery operations — overseeing hatchery technicians, managing the daily and seasonal cycles of egg incubation and animal-rearing, and the senior operational work behind hatchery-team supervision.
Median pay for a Hatchery Supervisor is about $74K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $40K to $157K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Active Listening, Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking, Coordination, and Reading Comprehension.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 0.6% through 2034, with roughly 35,440 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Plant Manager, Production Superintendent, and Senior Production Superintendent.
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