How to butcher hatches for bbq

[E Man]

Newb question about ranches.

I have two hatch ranches. I am getting eggs for omelettes (yay!). How do I queue hatches to be butchered for bbq? At this point, I'm not concerned about automation (I'm sure I will be later). But right now I have a couple extra hatches that I just want to butcher. How do I do that?

[dorianmode]

My recommendation is not to butcher them - they produce meat when they die of old age, and that way you get maximum egg production. If you want more meat, run more stables.

If you want to thin your herd then use the attack critter command - either by selecting the critter directly, or using the attack command in the bottom right corner - keyboard shortcut 't'.

[gimmethegepgun]

Yes, for now, you just tell your dupes to attack them and they'll go in and shoot them to death.
Later on, when you want to automate their death, you can design a drowning chamber to occasionally kill some, or you can store eggs underwater with no way to escape so as soon as they hatch they'll drown and evolve into their final form (meat).

[Hedning]

Set a dispenser to "sweep only" and have it output into a 3 tile deep water tank. Then sweep any eggs you want to turn into bbq. Later you can have automation place all eggs into that water tank and have unpowered incubators store enough eggs to sustain your hatch population.

[Garma Cyro]

What hedning says.
Given you got a dupe with the right skill, you set up a quick auto-sweeper+conveyor loader over your hatches to pick up eggs. Transport them into a 2x2 tile deep water tank (top 2 tiles = locked Pneumatic Doors) via conveyor chute.

Lastly you set up incubators (1 per 5 hatches) to ensure you got enough eggs for hatch population.

Francis John's got a good guide on hatch farm progress.
How you start with egg farming, and move onto meat farming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUD71i3fvOA

[Prometheus]

You can set up a clever way to maintain a full stable that replaces them without you having to give any commands.

First is move all eggs to a different room. Some people have already given you some tips on doing that.

Next put a critter drop in the room. Make sure it is lower priority than the one in the main ranch. Set it to zero max critters.

Finally create your drowning chamber room. This one also gets a critter drop, higher priority than the egg room, lower than the main ranch. However it also has a simple two tile deep pool of water. Its very little water, not enough to make the tiles "fill" just to create a puddle, enough to give your dupes wet feet but nothing more. Now put a door over it, the sealing one that is powered and can take an automation input (forgot the proper name). Put a critter sensor in the two tiles beneath it and have it close when a critter is beneath it. When the door closes it causes the water to temporarily "fill" the entire mini chamber. The critter will thus drown (you can even catch fliers in this trap) and once they convert from critter to meat the critter sensor releases the door for the next critter to fall in.

Final note: You will get a bunch of baby critters in the egg room. That is fine. The auto wrangle doesn't target babies. When they grow up they will get wrangled into the kill room.