Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (73 page)

If you’re hatching particularly valuable chicks, you might wish to brood them yourself in any case. Some breeders of exhibition birds jump the gun by moving term eggs to an incubator for the hatch. That’s tricky business, though, since any delay while moving the eggs, or an incorrect setting of the incubator, can ruin the hatch. On the other hand, a properly functioning mechanical hatcher can be the safer option, especially if your hen doesn’t have enough of a track record for you to be sure of her competence in mothering chicks.

The decision to use a mechanical incubator is not necessarily an either/or one. I let my hens set whenever one gets the urge because I enjoy the sight of a hen with chicks, but I use an incubator when I need a large number of chicks — to raise pullets as replacements for old layers while at the same time replenishing our family’s broiler supply with the excess cockerels. Consider artificial incubation if:

You keep a breed that doesn’t tend toward successful brooding

You want chicks out of the normal brooding season

You are trying to produce the perfect show bird

You are working to restore an endangered breed

You otherwise wish to hatch more chicks than broody hens can handle

Incubators come in a broad range of sizes, styles, and prices. The smallest incubator, designed for classroom and home school projects, holds no more than three eggs. At the other extreme, large room-size commercial incubators hatch thousands of eggs at a time.

Practical incubators for home use hold anywhere from a few dozen eggs to a few hundred. In determining what size you need, remember that not all the eggs you put into the incubator will hatch; a good hatch is considered to be 85 percent. If you get a 48-egg incubator — and assuming all the eggs you put into it are fertile and everything goes right — you can expect no more than about 40 chicks per hatch. With experience you may coax your incubator to a higher hatch rate; with less attention to detail, you’ll get a lower rate.

BASIC TABLETOP INCUBATOR

A tabletop model requires less space than a cabinet model that sits on the floor, but it hatches fewer eggs. Both tabletop and cabinet units range from hands-on models that require frequent attention to digital units that handle everything electronically. Some models in both styles have an observation window that lets you watch the hatch without opening the incubator, which could disrupt the hatch. In deciding which incubator is right for you, consider these five features:

ELECTRONIC CABINET INCUBATOR

Turning device

Airflow

Temperature control

Humidity control

Ease of cleaning