Hickman's Family Store

I'm here with my family, my sister Sharman, my dad Bill, my mother Gertie, and my brothers Billy and Clint. Welcome to We've been a family owned and operated farm since 1944. The business began when our grandparents Guy and Nell started selling eggs laid by hands in their own backyard. And our parents, Bill and Gertie, expand the business with 500 hens. Our dad would work on the farm in the morning and deliver eggs in the afternoon. In the early days, one little refrigerated panel truck was big enough to deliver the fresh eggs to small grocers and restaurants in the area. Today that one truck farm was grown into a multi-site operation based in Buckeye, Arizona. T We're here at our family farm in Central Arizona. Let's go inside. Approximately 3 million laying hens are housed in our environmentally friendly automated hen houses here in Arizona. We take great care of our hens and follow very strict guidelines to ensure they have adequate space, nutritious feed, clean water and fresh air. We have a large flock that we pay close attention to the health of each one of our hens. In fact, we have a team of specialists who monitor the health of each and every bird on a daily basis. Each day our hens lay more than 3 million eggs. Once eggs are laid, they are gathered and transferred directly from the hen house to the processing plant. Our hens produce eggs here in Buckeye. What happens is the c After the egg leaves the hen, it rides on a series of conveyor belts up to our processing mac It goes through a series of two was It then comes up, gets dried, the automatic check detection system sends sonic signals through the egg to listen and make sure that it's perfect quality inside. Next it rolls past a series of cameras. The cameras look both at the inside of the egg as well as the outside to look for any abnormalities. It goes then to the weighing system and in 1-1-1-1 of a second the computer determines if it's a j It drops into the egg packer of which all large or all j The carton then rolls along a conveyor belt and goes either to a person that is putting it into an outside cardboard case or it could actually even go to a robot that puts it into a case. Eliminating the need to move eggs by hand or other equipment reduces factors that might cause breakage and reduces waste. Once they've been inspected and sorted, they're packed and loaded into refrigerated trucks and delivered fresh to your store. Chances are you're serving delicious fresh eggs to your family just 24 hours after being late. When we say we provide fresh eggs, we mean it.