how to incubate

[SteeleFaithFarm]

Can someone give me a basic rundown of how to breed chickens. How do I collect, store then incubate eggs? The local farm store the an incubator for $45.00 but it doesn't have circulating write. Is that necessary? How long does it take for them to hatch? I wasn't to breed my Dellies and keep the pullets for eggs and the cockerels for meat. What is the simplest setup and method? Is there a time of year that is best for incubating or a bad time to incubate?

I'd love some advice!
Brad

 

[Stephanie739]

Hi Brad,

I would love to share what I have learned over the last few months! I've had a couple of very successful hatches and am currently incubating turkey eggs!

1) You can gather the eggs you want to incubate for about 7-10 days. Of course the fresher, the better I would think, and I try to set eggs in the incubator within about 5 days of laying. Store them where they will remain cool. I use the window AC room. I don't put my eggs for the incubator in the refrigerator. Gently turn the eggs, rotate, just move them around a bit each day.

2) When you have your desired number of eggs, place them all in the incubator at the same time. The average hatching time is 21 days, but both of my hatches came early (days 19 and 20) Have your incubator already stable at around 100 degrees. The temp will drop a bit when you first put the eggs in.

3) I keep my temperature around 100-101 and I do not use a fan either (still air) If you have a fan to circulate the air, you can keep your temperature a bit lower, 99.5. I have multiple thermometers in my homemade incubator (styrofoam cooler and a lightbulb!) They all run just a slight bit different so I just sort of estimate the temp. based on the four thermometers.

4) I keep my humidity around 35-45% during days 1-15. On day 15, I gradually begin to increase the humidity so that by day 18 (lockdown) my humidity is around 65-70%.

5) Turn your eggs several times a day, 3 times is good. I'm turning my turkey eggs more often.

6) Sometime around the middle of the incubation, you might experience some temperature spikes. This happens when the chicks begin to generate their own body heat. I use the room temperature to help stabilize. The room with the AC helps here again.

6) Lockdown is on day 18. Stop turning the eggs, bump up the humidity, and don't open the incubator until the babies have hatched. There are many creative ways to increase the humidity.

7) Here is a thread about incubators. I was really enthusiastic about sharing my set up lol https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/690760/incubator#post_9360844


Brad, I doubt it matters what season you incubate. Just keep in mind that the little babies need heat, so they will be requiring more assistance from you for this if you are breeding in the winter.

Good luck. Its fun

 

[SteeleFaithFarm]

Thank you so much for that information. My birds are only 15 weeks old, so I will have to wait a while til I can breed them. How do you create humidity in your incubator? Do you just the eggs with a spray bottle?

 

[Stephanie739]

Thank you so much for that information. My birds are only 15 weeks old, so I will have to wait a while til I can breed them. How do you create humidity in your incubator? Do you just the eggs with a spray bottle?

You are welcome! I am excited to share what I have learned about incubating!

I use a variety of methods to increase/maintain humidity.

My incubator has hardware cloth that rests about an inch from the bottom of the styrofoam. I think the best way to increase the humidity and maintain that increase it is by placing an absorbent (wet) material under the wire, like a puppy training pad. The larger the surface area, the better. The wire keeps the eggs from getting wet.

You can also wet the walls or place wet sponges in the incubator. A spray bottle works well too. I spray through the vents during lock down. I have used a medicine dropped through the vents during lock down too. I like to have my eggs resting on a paper towel or coffee filter..when I used the dropper, I had already had several babies hatch so one coffee filter under neath the vent only had an empty shell on it. I kept dropping water on the filter through the vent to increase the wet surface area inside the incubator.

 

[Stephanie739]

Oh! The humidity inside the incubator will reflect the humidity inside the room which it is located. When I use the AC room, the humidity drops because the room is dryer. My laundry room is very humid and hot. This is where I have my incubator now and the humidity is steady about 20 degrees higher than other rooms in my house without having used anything to increase the humidity inside the incubator. I have read some people will take the incubator into the bathroom and run a hot shower....

 

[Ridgerunner]

You might try reading this. I find it to be really helpful. I'll often reread it before each incubation as a refresher.

Texas A&M Incubation site
http://gallus.tamu.edu/library/extpublications/b6092.pdf

You adjust the humidity by adjusting the water surface area. You can add or take away reservoirs or use sponges, pieces of cloth, or even paper towels to wick water from a reservoir and increase the water surface area. I don't know which incubator you are looking at. With mine, a forced air, I have five different sized water reservoirs built into the plastic liner that goes under it. So my method is to fill different reservoirs with water, depending in what I want to do. If humidity is too high, I can cover part of a reservoir with aluminum foil to decrease the water surface area.

In a still air (the ones without a fan) the temperature can vary quite a bit depending in where you measure it. That's because hot air rises. In a still air, you should aim for a temperature of 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit measured at the top of the eggs. If you are off a little bit it is not necessarily the end of the world, but you should try to get as close to this as you reasonably can. The closer you are, the better your odds of a successful hatch.

That's true of many things in that Texas A&M article. Don't get too stressed out in trying to follow the recommedations to the letter. You have a bit of wiggle room in most of them. Just do the best you reasonably can and you will probably be doing it well enough.

Good luck!

 

[SteeleFaithFarm]

Thank you for such wonderful information. I am excited to try hatching chicks. I have raised lots of chicks from hatcheries but it will be neat to hatch chicks from my own flock. Thank you for imparting so much knowledge. I can't wait till my birds are old enough to lay.