Incubator vs hen

Temperature needs to be reasonably accurate when artificially incubating. Humidity can be more variable. I incubate at a slightly higher temperature than what is recommended and I've never had a problem. I've also incubated quail eggs at 75% humidity for the whole of incubation and had great hatch rates and no curled toes as I had been getting using a lower humidity (other people find the opposite to be true), but then my cheap incubator had great ventilation which I think would have helped.

We've had many first time broodies this spring. Two bantams incubated piles of eggs up in the trees (DH had to climb up to rescue the tiny bantam chicks!) and they only hatched a few each because they were trying to sit on far too many, and both sat for much longer than the 21 days. The chicks hatched out perfectly healthy other than one who had started to dry out and got stuck unzipping and sadly didn't make it.

Another broody hatched chicks in the coop but would abandon her newly hatched babies whenever I went up to feed them (I don't have food out all the time because of the local sparrows - our birds free range all day), and one chick we found squished. So the survivors were brought inside to be brooded. Yet I've had an OEGB that went broody in autumn for the first time and successfully hatch and raise 11 of her own eggs/chicks (after I removed extra eggs from her nest in a blackberry bush).

So success of broodies is variable and often requires human intervention to ensure they aren't sitting on too many or being bothered by other hens, and they often need their own set-up depending on how your coop/nestboxes are arranged.

In the end I like broodies raising chicks as in some ways it's less work for me, but overall I do find hatching eggs in an incubator more reliable.
 

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