How should eggs be incubated?

Kira Stoletova

If you are planning to start a broiler poultry business, hatching chicken eggs is the only possible way to get the required number of young each month. For artificial hatching of chickens, hens are not required. The main task of the farmer is to create the right microclimate in the incubator.

What you need to know for successful incubation

Many novice poultry farmers think that it is enough to buy, bring it into the house, put eggs there, and after some time the chicks will hatch, grow into healthy and beautiful chickens, as a result, it will be enough just to sell them and enjoy wealth.

But this does not happen, in order to grow viable young animals, certain skills and a theoretical knowledge base are needed. At each stage of incubation (there are four in total), unforeseen problems can arise, as a result of which the embryos die before they have time to turn into a bird.

Breeding chickens, even in a domestic incubator, is a complex technological process in which the temperature regime plays a key role:

If the incubation climate is warmer than expected, the embryos will begin to develop faster than usual, all the chicks of the brood will turn out to be unnaturally small in size, in addition, many will have an umbilical cord that has not yet grown over. Having managed to reduce the heat supply in time, the situation can be saved.
If the incubator is too cold, the chicks will be born the next day after the scheduled time. The mobility of frozen chicks will be significantly lower than that of their relatives hatched under normal conditions. But as soon as they warm up, everything will return to normal.

Very strong overheating or cooling of eggs can lead to the death of embryos, so you need to constantly monitor what temperature is in the container and adjust it if necessary.

Humidity is also important:

If the air in the chamber is dry, pipping will occur earlier than the set time, due to which the weight of the chickens will be less than usual.
If the humidity is high, the birth of chicks, on the contrary, will be slightly delayed. And if at the same time it is also cold in the chamber, there is a risk that the hatched chicks will be glued to the shell with their skin and beaks.

When artificially hatching chickens at home, it should be borne in mind that domestic incubators cannot always maintain the same temperature in all parts of the container, even if the instructions for the device contain other information. To ensure that all embryos develop evenly, the order of the eggs in the tray is periodically changed.

To ensure the necessary humidity in the incubator, you can install baths with water at room temperature in it. If the incubation air becomes sufficiently humid, simply covering the jar will be enough to lower this setting when needed, so that you can always move the lid a little to the side or remove it completely.

The optimum humidity for small appliances that are used at home is 50-65%. Its excessive increase is often accompanied by low air temperature, and with a decrease in this indicator, the air in the container, on the contrary, is excessively warm.

Requirements for incubated eggs

The incubation of goose or chicken eggs should be made only from the best samples, which should be selected and stored, following special recommendations.

Weight and appearance of the shell

At home, you need to take the scales and find out the mass of each egg. When breeding broiler chickens, this indicator is not the most important, but, if possible, these features should also be taken into account.

But the shell must be looked at very carefully. It will not work to breed healthy chickens in an incubator if the eggs are initially with a large number of light and dark stains on the outer surface. As a rule, this happens if the laying hens are fed with a low-quality product.

Defects revealed after candling

A universal way to check chicken eggs is to highlight them with an ovoscope. If you do not want to spend money on purchasing a device, you can easily make it yourself from improvised means. There are many articles, photos and videos on the network that show the technology.

With the help of a directed light beam, you can see where the egg has a build-up, depression, crack and unwanted inclusions. Even one identified defect indicates that the source material is not subject to incubation:

If a cracked egg is placed in a container, it will not be possible to grow a bird out of it, since the material will lose all moisture and the embryo will die very quickly.
Instances with a notch on the shell will lead to about the same, but there is no need to rush to reject them: you can try to get rid of the defect with starch glue.
The embryo develops incompletely in an egg with a deformed shell.

An ovoscope can show the state of the air chamber, indicating the freshness of the original product. When viewed through the light, the camera looks like a dark spot near the blunt side of the egg, it stands out strongly from the rest of the contents:

if the chamber is small, the product is fresh,
if the stain is large, the product is not fresh.

In the second case, the eggs are not suitable for incubation, as the embryos in them will develop very slowly.

During translucence, the eggs need to be twisted from all sides. If it became noticeable that the yolk shifted sharply either to a blunt or to a sharp end, then the cord (chalaz) holding it broke and this specimen is not suitable.

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How to disinfect

Before placing the product in a container, it should be thoroughly cleaned of dirt with a rag soaked in a manganese solution. Then the eggs must be disinfected.

Industrial processing is usually carried out with formaldehyde vapours. To do this, formaldehyde, water and potassium permanganate are mixed in equal proportions. To process one cubic meter, it is enough to take 30 ml of each substance.

The container with the solution is quickly placed in a special chamber, the selected eggs should already be there. After a few seconds, as a result of a violent reaction, caustic gas, formaldehyde, will begin to be released from the vessel. As a camera, you can use an ordinary wooden box that has no slots and closes very tightly. The procedure lasts approximately 30 minutes.

This method is suitable if the farmer has a large production of young animals. If the household uses a small household incubator, formaldehyde can be dispensed with by wet disinfection with a 30% aqueous solution of bleach. Immediately before placing the eggs in the incubator, you need to place them for a few minutes in the prepared disinfectant liquid.

How to save eggs for incubation

For storage, it is required to lay out the material in the cells with the blunt side up. The room where the product is to be stored must be clean and cool (optimum t - 18°C). At the same time, air humidity should be constantly maintained in the range of 80-85%. If long-term storage is necessary, it is better to lower the temperature slightly.

The maximum duration of storage of the source material is 6 days after the laying hen has laid it. But best of all, the fruits develop in specimens whose age is no more than 2 days.

How to properly lay eggs in an incubator

Each incubation always begins with the laying of the starting material in the trays. You can do it at any time of the day, although most farmers prefer to do this in the late afternoon.

Having taken the eggs from a cool storage, be sure to place them in a warm place for 1-2 hours and only then transfer them to the incubator.

Scheme of laying and chicken eggs:

Very large specimens are laid first, as the chicks hatch later.
after 6 hours, a medium-sized product is laid.
After another 6 hours, the turn of small eggs.

If everything is done correctly, the chicks will hatch at the same time. To simplify the process, it is better to immediately select all medium-sized eggs as starting material.

Incubation stages and temperature conditions

Before laying the product, each tray of the incubator must be heated to room temperature (25-27°C).

Incubation should take place in four stages:

Stage 1 - period from 1 to 7 days,
Stage 2 - the period from 8 to 11 days,
Stage 3 - the period from 12 days to the first squeak of chicks that have not yet been born.
Stage 4 - the period from the first squeak to the bite.

Table of modes of incubation of chicken eggs at home.

The table clearly shows the conditions under which the eggs must be incubated in order for the embryos to develop correctly. If you are afraid to forget something or miss an important deadline, you can get an electronic calendar on your phone and mark the time and days there for the necessary procedures.

First stage

The first 3 stages need to keep the eggs at a temperature of 37.7 ° C and a humidity of 50% or a little more. These days, you need to turn the eggs every 60 minutes (hens do this all the time in natural conditions).

It is very good if your incubator model has a built-in turn function, if not, you need to open the container and carefully turn each egg over. We must always try to follow these simple rules and the scrolling schedule in a timely manner. It is necessary to change the position of the eggs so that the embryos do not adhere to the walls of the eggs and die.

Periodically throughout the entire period of incubation, it is necessary to understand whether the embryo is developing correctly. At the first transillumination, a developed circulatory network covering more than half of the yolk surface should be clearly visible. The embryo itself is still hidden inside the plasma. If abnormally developing eggs or those in which the embryo is absent have become noticeable, it is required to remove them from the tray.

Second and third stages

From the second week, the next stage of incubation begins, on these days the embryo needs the maximum amount of water. Too dry air has a detrimental effect on the development of future chicks. The embryo is already visible in the light in the egg, and the allantois has closed at the blunt end.

On the days of the third stage, good air circulation should be ensured, which will promote active gas exchange and metabolism. We must continue to monitor the development of the fetus.

By this time, the embryo will fill almost the entire space, with the exception of the air chamber, under which (under normal conditions) a third of the egg should be allocated. At the end of the third period, the chicks will begin to squeak inside the egg and reach towards its sharp end, trying to break through the film of the air chamber first, and then the shell itself.

Fourth stage

And finally, the last, fourth stage. At this time, the chicks are ready to be born and your task is to help them with this. For easy biting, it is important to ensure that the temperature in the chamber is constantly maintained at around 37.2 ° C, and the humidity is at least 78%. If the device has a ventilation function, you should turn it on twice a day, if not, you need to ventilate the incubator yourself (the process should last about 20 minutes). From day 18, eggs can not be turned over, they should always lie on their sides at a good distance from each other.

Among other things, it is important to pay attention to how the chicks squeak. With the normal development of the fetus, the sound from the shell should come out even, gentle, not too loud. If the chickens start screaming with all their might, then they are cold.

Before hatching, the chick begins to turn clockwise and peck at the shell. For healthy young animals, this work is not difficult, the shell breaks off in large pieces and after 3-4 pecking a crack forms in the egg and the chick is born. If you have never seen how chickens appear, you can watch videos on this topic, which you can find on the Internet as much as you like.

Incubation lasts an average of 3 weeks (21 days). Chicks from eggs loaded simultaneously into the device should all hatch on the same day with a difference of several minutes to several hours. After the chicks have hatched, you need to carefully examine and select the bird.

For healthy chicks:

strong strong legs
shiny fluff,
bulging eyes,
clear look,
short beaks.

Pets must actively move and respond to extraneous sounds. It is important to carefully examine the bellies of chickens, check the umbilical cord for softness. If a slight increase in the abdomen is noticeable, on which there are small dried blood clots near the umbilical cord, there is no need to rush to reject the broiler chick, in the future the situation may return to normal. The same applies to babies, whose feather color is not too ideal (pale, dull).

If the chickens are very weak, they must be killed immediately. It is not worth wasting precious time on a bad brood, it is better to pay more attention to viable individuals. Hatched lumps should be kept in the incubator until they dry out, then you need to move them into (a box or cardboard box is suitable for this purpose).

The main mistakes of poultry farmers during incubation, which can cause high mortality of young animals, are as follows:

low quality of selected chicken eggs,
wrong mode of incubation,
too long storage of the source material.

The main task of incubation is, taking into account all the subtleties, to create the right microclimate in which the development of embryos will occur in a timely and harmonious manner. For any, even a fully automated device, constant monitoring is required at least 3 times a day. It should be remembered that even if all the parameters are set correctly, no one is immune from failures in the operation of equipment.