hatchery
Americannoun
-
hatcheries
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of hatchery
Explanation
A hatchery is a place where fish or bird eggs are hatched. Do you want to raise chickens so you can have fresh eggs every day? You'll probably buy your birds as babies from a hatchery. Small poultry hatcheries produce chicks that are usually sold to backyard farmers. Larger poultry hatcheries are more like factories, supplying chickens for meat or eggs to enormous corporations. Fish hatcheries are an important part of fish farming, providing a safe place for eggs to hatch and fish to grow large enough to be used for food.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District even has its own fish hatchery, where it rears the aptly named Western mosquitofish.
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2026
Crews stunned the fish with electricity, scooped them up in buckets, trucked them to a hatchery and ultimately moved them to Arroyo Hondo Creek in Santa Barbara County.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026
Chris Weston, senior hatchery technician at the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall, has observed colour changes in lobsters raised in captivity.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2025
"Interestingly, when we deploy them into containers in the sea, they often shift to a darker, more natural blue. But when they return to the hatchery, they become lighter again."
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2025
“I’ve heard there’s an opening at a hatchery in Missouri. If it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on.”
From "Kira-Kira" by Cynthia Kadohata
As Mr. Ogilvy writes, “now the abalone live in hatcheries, the sardines in tanks, the tuna in the fish holds of charter boats and gourmet custom cans.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Mr Weston believes this may be due to environmental factors such as light exposure, as hatcheries may be brighter than the seabed, influencing pigmentation.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2025
As detailed by National Geographic, it is a common practice in salmon hatcheries to harvest salmon sperm, which requires a scientist to squeeze a salmon in the right spot — also known as abdominal massaging.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2024
But the population has surged in recent years, thanks to a curbing of harvests, habitat restoration and use of hatcheries to bolster populations.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 6, 2024
In the spring of 1961 an epidemic of liver cancer appeared among rainbow trout in many federal, state, and private hatcheries.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
