Incubating in my bra: An experiment.

[member 142084]

lol I read about this before and it works. I did it for 2 days while waiting for the incubator to arrive You really forget the egg is there after a while. But at hatching I would be nervous. I stuck it in a dish cloth in the oven with the light on for night time. Watching

 

[Aphrael]

Okay, I'm subscribing to this thread - love it!

I hatched a cockatiel egg in my cleavage once. It was hatching day and the mother had abandoned it. I just popped it in my bra and went to work. It was interesting to see people's expressions when my boobs started chirping! That little cockatiel lived with us for 21 years.

Oh my gosh! I bet the expressions were totally priceless!

I believe if there was a car crash the first responders would suggest time in the nut house if they heard "Check my boobs! Did my eggs break?! Are the chicks okay?!" I saved 10 crazy sebrights that thought they were supposed to go for a swim as soon as they saw water by putting them inside my shirt for a couple of hours. Hey, it works! I hope you can make it until they hatch. Good luck.

I can so picture that encounter!

I keep invisioning the chick hatching and saying "Are you my mother?"

Haha. Reminds me of a book I read my girls all the time, "Are You My Mama?". About a duckling wandering and asking all the animals if they were his mother.

 

[Peplers chicks]

I did not read all the comments, but want to add my info aswell, My wife is used to incubate the chicks in her bra, every time my broody hen leave her nest and there is still eggs that is late, I use her as my private incubator, we had very good success.

 

[gander007]

Oh good still working

and what only about 12 more days to go

I got's to check this everyday

gander007

 

[ClucksAndPeeps]

Updates?

 

[Aphrael]

I did not read all the comments, but want to add my info aswell, My wife is used to incubate the chicks in her bra, every time my broody hen leave her nest and there is still eggs that is late, I use her as my private incubator, we had very good success.

That's awesome!

 

[MargaretYakoda]

Oh good still working

and what only about 12 more days to go

I got's to check this everyday

gander007

OMG it would be only 12 days if Abe were to hatch on schedule. Almost half way to that mark already! Wow.

That's a big IF though. Last time I candled him I wasn't sure if there was any new progress from when I reported here. I'm not sure, but I suspect Abe has quit on me. I'm very new at all this, and I've never really candled before this experiment. And, of course, most hatches are only candled two or three times before lockdown, so the fact that Abe looked almost the same two days in a row may not mean anything at all.

On Christmas Eve I got a copy of Janet Stromberg's "A Guide To Better Hatching." I had ordered it hoping to read all the wonderful information it supposedly had on ancient techniques of body hatching in China and other places. I was disappointed, to say the least. Four pages at the back, with no citation, only conjecture and poor illustrations gleaned from old magazines and county extension handouts prior to 1950. One illustration in particular, an artist's interpretation of a Chinese man wearing a coat with masses of eggs in the pockets is less than useless from a research standpoint. However, the idea that there are some ancient incubators that use the heat generated by sheer masses of eggs developing was interesting.

That said, there's still some good information in that old book. For example, germ growth in the blastoderm starts at 68 degrees. 80 degrees is a high enough temperature to support some growth of the embryo, even when it's not enough heat to continue that growth for very long. When a hen is sitting on eggs, the eggs are only in contact with the hen on one side. The other side has got to be pulling some heat out of the egg. Of course, the hen's internal temperature is 107 degrees so... There's that.

Stromberg says that there's a high risk of deformities in chicks who are incubated at either a too high, or too low temperature. She indicates that a multi-stage incubator can be set as low as 96 degrees, but I think she meant that was only for the last few days of incubation. Most incubators, according to Stromberg, are set at about 99.5 degrees for the duration of the hatching. This, however, doesn't take into account the effect of the humidity on temperature. Stromberg has some charts that show the wet bulb reading for a successful hatch is closer to 90, with 94 degrees recommended during lock down.

So, (and here's the fun I'm sure some of you folks are here to read) I'm guessing (and it's ONLY a guess at this point) that the skin in my chest area is especially humid, particularly considering the fact that I'm wearing a sweater and a sweat shirt, and the eggs themselves have a bit of wool between themselves and my bra, the temperature in that area - which runs at an unvarying 97.7 degrees, is probably going to be just fine. The bigger issue may be keeping myself (and thus the large end of the eggs) upright during the crucial times when the chicks turn themselves to be ready to pip.

One more note on Stromberg's take on the history of body hatching: She concludes with this "Incubation by body heat is a crude possibility but we are sure that few of us could exercise that much patience" Which I will counter with this thought: Throughout history the women of many families have too often had to resort to whatever worked to keep the wolf away from the family's door. Often, also, they were in charge of garden and hen house. And, as a group, women's histories are very often overlooked and untold. So, with that, I would like to propose a new idea: That in historical times body incubation was done a great deal more frequently than we now imagine. When faced with four or five hens who won't brood, I can easily imagine the average pioneer woman giving this sort of thing a try, if only out of sheer desperation!

Also? Challenge accepted Ms. Stromberg! Challenge accepted!

 

[Aphrael]

OMG it would be only 12 days if Abe were to hatch on schedule. Almost half way to that mark already! Wow.

That's a big IF though. Last time I candled him I wasn't sure if there was any new progress from when I reported here. I'm not sure, but I suspect Abe has quit on me. I'm very new at all this, and I've never really candled before this experiment. And, of course, most hatches are only candled two or three times before lockdown, so the fact that Abe looked almost the same two days in a row may not mean anything at all.

On Christmas Eve I got a copy of Janet Stromberg's "A Guide To Better Hatching." I had ordered it hoping to read all the wonderful information it supposedly had on ancient techniques of body hatching in China and other places. I was disappointed, to say the least. Four pages at the back, with no citation, only conjecture and poor illustrations gleaned from old magazines and county extension handouts prior to 1950. One illustration in particular, an artist's interpretation of a Chinese man wearing a coat with masses of eggs in the pockets is less than useless from a research standpoint. However, the idea that there are some ancient incubators that use the heat generated by sheer masses of eggs developing was interesting.

That said, there's still some good information in that old book. For example, germ growth in the blastoderm starts at 68 degrees. 80 degrees is a high enough temperature to support some growth of the embryo, even when it's not enough heat to continue that growth for very long. When a hen is sitting on eggs, the eggs are only in contact with the hen on one side. The other side has got to be pulling some heat out of the egg. Of course, the hen's internal temperature is 107 degrees so... There's that.

Stromberg says that there's a high risk of deformities in chicks who are incubated at either a too high, or too low temperature. She indicates that a multi-stage incubator can be set as low as 96 degrees, but I think she meant that was only for the last few days of incubation. Most incubators, according to Stromberg, are set at about 99.5 degrees for the duration of the hatching. This, however, doesn't take into account the effect of the humidity on temperature. Stromberg has some charts that show the wet bulb reading for a successful hatch is closer to 90, with 94 degrees recommended during lock down.

So, (and here's the fun I'm sure some of you folks are here to read) I'm guessing (and it's ONLY a guess at this point) that the skin in my chest area is especially humid, particularly considering the fact that I'm wearing a sweater and a sweat shirt, and the eggs themselves have a bit of wool between themselves and my bra, the temperature in that area - which runs at an unvarying 97.7 degrees, is probably going to be just fine. The bigger issue may be keeping myself (and thus the large end of the eggs) upright during the crucial times when the chicks turn themselves to be ready to pip.

One more note on Stromberg's take on the history of body hatching: She concludes with this "Incubation by body heat is a crude possibility but we are sure that few of us could exercise that much patience" Which I will counter with this thought: Throughout history the women of many families have too often had to resort to whatever worked to keep the wolf away from the family's door. Often, also, they were in charge of garden and hen house. And, as a group, women's histories are very often overlooked and untold. So, with that, I would like to propose a new idea: That in historical times body incubation was done a great deal more frequently than we now imagine. When faced with four or five hens who won't brood, I can easily imagine the average pioneer woman giving this sort of thing a try, if only out of sheer desperation!

Also? Challenge accepted Ms. Stromberg! Challenge accepted!

Huzzah! Cannot wait to see you prove her wrong!

 

[foreverlearning]

We are the perfect incubating machine. We are built to incubate our own young inside of our bodies so for times like those it wouldn't be a far stretch to consider incubating eggs to save their families.

 

[Aphrael]

We are the perfect incubating machine. We are built to incubate our own young inside of our bodies so for times like those it wouldn't be a far stretch to consider incubating eggs to save their families.

Exactly. And if you think about it, the first reaction of most us when being confronted by a small, helpless creature is to cuddle it to us to share our warmth. I don't think it is any stretch to imagine that our ancestors would have made the leap in logic to warming eggs with their bodies as well.

Edited to correct typos. Darn cold medicine is making me fuzzy.