We could find no information on incubation of the eggs, not even under a broody hen. The only trouble with this idea was that all our books manuals and brochures on poultry-raising told us to begin with day-old chicks. That’s when we decided to try hatching our own fertile eggs. Then spring rolled around again, our neighbors began ordering new chicks from the hatchery and we discovered that the cost of day-old biddies had doubled in our area. Meanwhile, meat prices were rising steadily and we began to consider keeping more chickens for slaughter. By the end of each week during that period, we always had at least a dozen extra for sale or gifts to friends. Five months later we discovered our first egg, and gathered the fresh, fertile layings faithfully each day for many months afterward. We clipped their wingtips at that point, constructed a broiler house from miscellaneous scraps of wood and wire and - when they were sufficiently grown - moved our birds to their outdoor quarters. By the second week the babies’ wings had developed and we discovered them flying around the room and alighting on various objects. The day-old chicks were carefully tended, kept warm and protected from drafts by a homemade brooder - a cardboard carton heated with a light bulb - in our empty guestroom for a few weeks. Our start with chicken-raising was very cautious: a tiny flock of ten pullets and a cockerel, obtained from a hatchery. Learn how to hatch chicken eggs with a light bulb in a homemade egg incubator with information on types of incubators, heat, humidity, ventilation, and hatching. Home Organization News, Blog, & Articles.Energy Efficiency News, Blog, & Articles.Have you hatched eggs yourself? Let us know what kind of incubators have worked for you and your flock. Proper temperature, humidity, and air circulation lead to a healthy group of chicks-and from there, it’s on to the chicken brooder as the newest members of your flock start their journeys to adulthood. Due to the controlled temperature and humidity limiting the natural flow of oxygen, incubators need ventilation systems to provide the eggs with plenty of fresh air.īy providing a warm and secure home for the eggs, incubators replicate the care a mother hen would normally give. The porous shells of the eggs breathe in oxygen and dispel carbon dioxide, so proper air circulation is a necessity for incubators. Like most living things, chicken eggs need fresh oxygen to grow and survive. It’s important to keep a close eye on the humidity levels in your incubator and make sure your water source doesn’t deplete and dry out the eggs. During the last few days before hatching, the eggs need higher levels of humidity than during the rest of the hatching period. The ideal level of humidity will change depending on the type of eggs you have as well as what stage of the hatching process you’re in. Even slight temperature changes that aren’t enough to kill the chick can negatively affect the hatch time and result in weak birds that are more prone to disease.Īlong with the temperature, incubators control the humidity so that the eggs don’t lose too much moisture. If you keep eggs at a temperature that’s too high or too low, the embryo inside will die. Chicken eggs are extremely sensitive to temperature, so an incubator keeps them safe by keeping them at the precise, ideal temperature: 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the most important aspects of how a chicken incubator works is temperature control. How does a chicken incubator work, and what does it need to keep the eggs healthy? Find out with this overview. When this happens, farmers rely on incubators to see the eggs safely through the hatching process. Unfortunately, a mother hen isn’t always there to take care of her eggs, so the responsibility of safely hatching them falls to the farmers. From keeping them warm with her own body heat to adjusting them throughout the day so that they lay just right, a hen knows exactly what to do with her soon-to-be chicks. When a hen lays, cares for, and hatches her eggs, instinct tells her exactly what to do.
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