Helpful hints for first time increasing flock size?

[sarabeth485]

Hi all. I currently still have my original five coturnix that I picked up impulsively last summer from a breeder on Craigslist. There are two Pharoah and three Italians (4 hens and 1 roo). As far as I can tell they are standard size and lay 9-12 gram eggs.

I would like to expand the flock a bit and I've finally come to terms with culling the extra birds. This means that I would hopefully be able to enjoy hatching a few eggs and raising the chicks with my two young children.

I raised a few pet ducks, including hatching some in an incubator, as a teenager but that is my only hatching experience. So, what are your suggestions?

What is a decent, cost effective incubator? I live on a tiny city lot so my flock will never be close to anything large and I don't want to put a ton of money into a rarely used incubator but obviously a terrible incubator would be frustrating.

Would you recommend just hatching out some of the eggs from my birds or investing in some mail order jumbos? My main goal is eggs not meat production and as cute as a 10 gram egg is I wouldn't mind a little more size for the effort.

I've got a ton of other thoughts and questions rolling around in my head but wanted to start with these. Thanks for your help!

 

[PepeDeSilva]

I bought this one on Amazon for $60 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F38C8R1/?tag=backy-20
I think it works reasonably well, I'd recommend getting a little hydrometer/thermometer with it to keep track of humidity. I hatched my first batch this month from some eggs I bought on ebay. 4/12 hatched successfully, another 3 piped but never pushed out of the egg, the rest didn't develop. The eggs were exposed to a hard freeze during shipping so I think that had more to do with the hatch rate than the incubator. Temp was very stable and you don't have to worry about manually turning.

 

[CoturnixComplex]

Hey, that's the incubator I was about to link! Get it OP! It's my favorite of my three. Only downside is you can't see inside very well.

Just make sure you run a separate thermometer on it. Mine ran low .

 

[sarabeth485]

Thanks for the responses. I came across that one on Amazon in my searching but never know how much faith to put in the reviews. Does it seem to do an adequate job of auto turning quail eggs (as opposed to a larger chicken egg)? How many quail eggs do you think you could incubate at one time in there? I think the description says 16 or so.

 

[CoturnixComplex]

Thanks for the responses. I came across that one on Amazon in my searching but never know how much faith to put in the reviews. Does it seem to do an adequate job of auto turning quail eggs (as opposed to a larger chicken egg)? How many quail eggs do you think you could incubate at one time in there? I think the description says 16 or so.

I fit 25! 5 rows of 5. It does a pretty good job turning them but it occasionally will roll one pointy end up so it's good to check them occasionally.

 

[le_bwah]

Thanks for the responses. I came across that one on Amazon in my searching but never know how much faith to put in the reviews. Does it seem to do an adequate job of auto turning quail eggs (as opposed to a larger chicken egg)? How many quail eggs do you think you could incubate at one time in there? I think the description says 16 or so.

I've got the same one, marketed as the older "Janoel 12." Could easily fit more than they recommend if you hand-turn. I hand-turned both my hatches, only five times a day with no "sticking" or other issues.

You can read some Amazon reviews for the product under different names to get a quick idea of its shortcomings—turner moves slowly (good thing), runs a little hot/cold, can't trust the inbuilt thermometer, etc.

Would you recommend just hatching out some of the eggs from my birds or investing in some mail order jumbos? My main goal is eggs not meat production and as cute as a 10 gram egg is I wouldn't mind a little more size for the effort.

As far as I know, many jumbo lines don't lay substantially larger eggs than standard. I would actually recommend ordering mixed-color eggs—different colors makes keeping track of individuals easier, and all the different mutations can be beautiful to watch. (Also, my Goldens/Italians lay the largest eggs of the flock, but it's a pretty small sample size.)