![]() ![]() For prime hatchability of your eggs be sure to feed your breeding birds a diet high in protein with plenty of greens and comparatively little grain. The first eggs tend to be smaller and less uniform in size, with lower fertility rates.ĭiet. If you're breeding from birds who are in their first laying season ever, wait to begin storing eggs for incubation until the hens have been laying several weeks. Whatever roosters, hens, and eggs you choose, choose the best: birds that conform to their established breed characteristics for fancy breeds, and birds that carry desirable traits of egg-laying, egg size, good health for egg-meat production breeds. To raise crosses you'd have to do your own crossing by finding out what 2 kinds of chickens result in the cross you want, and then breed them. Then you know what you have, and you know what you're going to get. Raise purebred chickens of a kind you like. If you collect eggs from hybrids and crosses the offspring will not be like the parents. Pointy-ended eggs make roasters, says Ellinor Nürnberg of Ontario, Canada. Of Eggs and Heredity: Look carefully to see whether one end of the egg is pointy or round. If you have an incubator and can buy fertile eggs locally for reasonable prices, it's probably cheaper than mail-ordering. Fifty percent is a poor hatch rate, 70 percent about average, and 85-90 percent is very good. Nevertheless, you're bound to have some eggs that don't hatch. Even the smallest size, which will hold about a dozen eggs, can keep them adequately warm, humidified, and turning. Home incubation is actually a practical option, especially with the inexpensive, but functional, small incubators available for sale. So if you want more of them, you have to buy them again from the commercial hatchery-or incubate their eggs yourself. Still want to have a go at a DIY incubator? Let's look at how it can be done.The most productive modern chicken breeds (in terms of meat and eggs) are carefully selected genetic strains that won't go broody. ![]() It's important to remember that in any clutch of eggs there will be some which don't hatch for all kinds of reasons which are nothing whatever to do with the incubator: low fertility levels, time of year, handling and transporting problems, poor storage, bacteria infecting porous eggs and so on.Some studies put it as low as 33%, although others claim to have a much higher success rate. Hatch rates in general from homemade incubators tend to be well under 50%.They tend not to work as well in rooms which have a low or fluctuating temperature - although this is also true of some of the smaller commercial incubators.If they're not controlled properly, hatch levels tend to be very poor. These are two of the most critical parts of incubation. The biggest disadvantage is that it's notoriously difficult to keep temperature and humidity levels right.You have the satisfaction of knowing you're using re-cycled (upcycled) items.You can make it largely from re-cycled items you may have around your home, so it costs even less.It's a much less expensive way of hatching than using a store-bought incubator - at least on the surface.In this article, I examine the positives and drawbacks of doing it yourself, and provide three sets of instructions to help you make your own if you decide that's the way you want to go.Īnd I talk to our local Farmers' Union about the fish tank incubator they have used successfully for generations. Is it really that simple? Have we become too reliant on commercially-produced gadgets to perform what is essentially a very natural process? Our friend Claudio tells me his mother (in rural Italy) used to hatch chicks in the warm space under the kitchen fireplace if there was no broody hen available. So can a homemade incubator be less expensive while still providing the optimum levels of heat, humidity and security needed for a successful hatch? The information in this article is taken from reading extensively about DIY incubators, talking to members of our local farmers' union about their "fish tank incubator" (see below), and hearing from friends and neighbours who have used them - and still do. But many of my friends here in Italy have - in fact, my Brinsea incubators became something of a celebrity because they are such an unusual sight. ![]()
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