incubaters vs. heating lamps

[greygirls]

Just wondering which is best to hatch eggs with & how much each costs. We've never tried to hatch out any of our eggs but since they are laying like crazy right now with no chance of the eggs hatching due to the cold, we were hoping to pull the eggs & try to hatch them ourselves. There's both chicken & duck eggs. Also, how often do they need to be turned & any other tips as we've always just left them with momma hen before & therefore have no clue what we're doing. Thanks guys!

[farmergal]

Check out this web site it can answer many of your questions.
http://home.comcast.net/~out1rider/page13.html

A styrofoam incubator is cheap and works much better than a heat lamp. It's much easier to control both the temp and humidity.
http://www.tractorsupply.com/webapp/...&ip_perPage=20

[greygirls]

Thanks farmergal! I'll check them out!

It's kinda funny...when my mum told me that this is what she'd like to try but that she didn't know where to begin with it all, I told her not to worry... farmergal will know !

[farmergal]

Thank you for the complement.

I first got started with incubating as a child when my step dad would hatch out turkey eggs. He set up this huge monstrosity that weighed a ton (not really but it was heavy ) in the hallway to the bedrooms. I remember him lovingly tending those eggs. He was like a momma hen squawking at us kids.

Then I grew up to try my own hand at hatching eggs. Only I was hatching pet birds like doves, keets, tiels etc. My life has gone full circle and I know use my talents to hatch chickens.

I'm not a know it all as I feel one can always learn something new. But I'm willing to share my experiences with others.

Knowledge is power. Read everything you can get your hands on.

[mandelyn82]

I never did have luck with the heat lamps, but had amazing luck with the styrofoam box sort that come with a thermostat. I paid $45 years and years ago, and $75 for the same kind just a couple years ago. I got the last one off of Ebay, was quite happy with it. It gave me a 97% hatch rate, for Ducks, Chickens, and Quail.

I didn't have luck mixing ducks and chickens though, I had to do them separately because there's either too much humidity for the chickens, or not enough for the ducks.

The ducks need more water in the hatcher, and then misted once a day with a spray bottle... it imitates a momma duck fresh from a swim, that's how they get humidity naturally.

Too much humidity on the chickens or "dry" birds will cause "mushy" chicks that may or may not hatch, and if they hatch it's not good.

Not enough humidity on the ducks can cause them not to develop, or if they do not to hatch, or have a "dry" hatch where they egg shell sticks to them and it just causes a mess. I only had a dry duck once, she survived but had a deformed butt from being stuck in the egg. We named her "Crooked Butt", or CB for short. Her tail was rounded off to the left, rather sharply. Healthy besides that though. I had kept water in the bottom of the tray, but I wasn't as vigilant with the spray bottle as I should have been.

If you don't get an egg turner, don't overload yourself with eggs. After about turn #37 it gets pretty old. I had made the mistake of hatching 80 quail at once... took a long time on the twice-daily turnings.

A half dozen is a good place to start. Not too many, so if there's any mistake you're not put out much. Increase from there. Personally I like 15-20, gives a nice sized brood of chicks to play with.

You'll need a brooder too for after the hatch. I like using a large wooden box (5 feet long, 2 feet wide, 3 feet tall) with a plastic tray of the same size for a cleanable bottom. Just make sure the tray is flush with the wood, so that chicks can't get stuck between them.

For heat I clip a drop light to the side, so that it hangs 2 inches from the bottom, and 6 inches or more from the sides. The bin is big enough for the chicks to get away from the heat as needed. They need to stay at 97-99 degrees the first week. Then drop the temp by raising the light higher each week from there.

I just use newspaper as bedding, you can roll it up easily and it's way cheap. Chicks will eat shavings, so the bedding you choose needs to be something they won't eat.

Having the chick-sized waters is an excellent idea, they stay cleaner and none will drown. It contains the mess of ducklings alright too.

Ducklings are a lot messier than chickens. They'll mix the water and food together, and sling the mush all over the place. Which then stinks really bad. They need their brooder cleaned 2 to 3 times more often than chickens. If you supply them with a water dish, it will last about 20 minutes. I took mine outside for a swim in a baby pool instead of giving them play water in the brooder. I had 5, that was a good number for ducks.

It's a lot of fun raising chicks! Just time consuming.

[farmergal]

Originally Posted by mandelyn82

It's a lot of fun raising chicks! Just time consuming.

There you have it in a nutshell!

Hatching and brooding chicks is not a cheap hobby. I went for years hand turning my eggs then I bought an automatic turner only to go back to turning by hand. I wasn't happy with the hatch. Sure the turners can free up your time and the eggs don't get chilled but my turner was jerky and vibrated so I blamed it for the less than 50% hatch I got. Not to mention the egg holders keep falling off. What I do like about my incubator is the fan. That I feel was a good investment although not all eggs should be hatched under a fan. I also have a full view top. I own a styrofoam one.

If you opt to manually turn your eggs use a pencil with a blunt tip and mark off your egg with a l, quarter turn the egg mark ll and so on. This helps you to know what eggs you have turned and what ones still need to be.

Should back up here and tell you that it all starts from the day the hen lays the egg and ends the day you shut down your brooder and send your fully feathered chicks to their chicken coop.

If you have questions or need help. We'll do the best we can to help you through. Feel free to pick our brains. There is no dumb questions only dumb answers.

Some fun pics to entice you. The pros and cons

Reason number 1...why I prefer mom over me.

They keep outgrowing their container. Avoid overcrowding.


Sometimes I let someone else do the hatching and I do the rest.

[greygirls]

Thanks guys! It sounds a lot more complicated than I thought it was. I too prefer to let momma hen/duck raise their own babies but the babies never survive that way so we thought we'd give it a go. I'm not too sure I wanna have ducklings to look after again though. We got ours as babies & man were they messy & smelly. Not to mention they grew so darn fast we could barely keep up with housing them. I tried raising the one chick that survived after his momma was taken by some nasty little critter & he was easy enough to look after but he too got eaten.

[farmergal]

Aw! I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm really surprised most of mine survived. Those bantam chicks are so tiny.

Can I ask what kind of chickens you would like to hatch?

To keep cost down you can take some short cuts. One would to be let mom hatch the chicks and then you take them from her and brood them yourself. I know it sounds harsh but she will get over it and be back to laying in no time. If you felt better about it you can steel the eggs several days before they hatch and incubate them. (This way you can eliminate 18 to 25 days of worry and work. Momma hen is rotating the eggs for you. )
I had to do that when my tiels would produce a large clutch. Thank goodness chicks fend for themselves. Raising a cockatiel from hatch is a labor of love.

I know when you have a wealth of information tossed at you it can be overwhelming but when you roll up your sleeves and set to work it's really quite simple. You only have to ask yourself do you want to spend X amount of dollars in your adventure.

I'd say if I'm raising birds, an incubator and a brooder are a good investment!

[greygirls]

Originally Posted by farmergal

Can I ask what kind of chickens you would like to hatch?

The chickens are bantams & the ducks are...well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know which one is laying . We have a Rouen pair & three Pekins (drake & two ducks). I imagine it's one of the Pekins as they're the ones turning our barnyard into a birdy porno. Ours are all free range so I think that's why the chicks didn't survive. We've only had one brood hatch out of all the nests they've layed. Momma hen layed on top of a stack of hay & the chicks fell between the bales & died. Their poppa would attack them too! I got really attached to the little one I tried to raise & was devastated when something got him.

[mandelyn82]

Yes, it is a lot of work, but after you do it a couple of times it gets super easy when everything makes sense. I was hatching by myself from age 14... because my hens wouldn't let me hold "my" chicks. So I "stole" eggs and got my own brood to play with.

I started with a small 4 egg light incubator, it looked like a little yellow space ship. It worked on Bantams ok, but the large eggs it said it could hold, regular chicken eggs, they would develop but not hatch. So I retired that one to do wild eggs (robins, sparrows, whatever came along after a Spring thunderstorm) and got the styrofoam kind for the chickens.

If you have everything you need set up first, it's a breeze. For chickens, you set up your incubator, and get the temp set to 99 degrees, and pour some water into the troughs that are in the bottom. Once you maintain 99 degrees for over 6 hours, you're ready to put eggs in. The eggs from the hens can be stored at room temperature for up to 10 days before being put on heat.

When you start the eggs on the same day, they will hatch on the same day. 21 days for chickens, but you don't turn the eggs the last 2 days. Hopefully there's a full grown chick inside getting ready to hatch and it's in the process of pulling in the yolk.

While your eggs are cooking, get the brooder ready. When they start hatching, they can stay in the hatcher for up to 24 hours. Wait until they're up and walking around before you put them in the brooder.

The first crack of the hatch is when you turn on the light to your brooder to let it start warming up. Just like when you started up the hatcher, monitor the temperature of the brooder to make sure it will hold steady and not exceed 98 degrees or so. That's why I like a larger brooder.. excess heat can escape, and the chicks won't grow out of it.

After that, feed and water and cleaning is all that's left. If you want super tame chickens, hold the chicks regularly. I would always favor the roosters so that when they grew up and became little men they would never flog me. It gave them a chance to stay out of the stew pot for bad rooster behavior. I never could tolerate being attacked by my own roosters. I think it has to do with being attacked by my two Rhode Island Red Easter chicks at 5 years old.

You can bypass some of the work and still have them live to adulthood by building a sturdy pen outdoors. When I added large breeds to my bantams... they grew out of the brooder before they were 4 months old, so I ended up taking the wooden brooder outside, flipping it to it's side, adding short legs and doors, then building a fence and roof around it to keep the coons out. Then put the drop light in for their heat because it was only March.

Coons, hawks, and fox were what my chick problem was, not many of mine hatched by hens made it.

[mandelyn82]

Oh... your Pekins aren't setters, if you want more of them you'll have to hatch or put them under another broody hen. A chicken will hatch a duck if you give her the eggs... but under a Bantam hen it would look really funny.

Pekins will lay, and they may set for week or two, but they're sssoooo domesticated they rarely follow through on it.

Here's what I got for hatching Pekins myself...



Five total, all girls.

[greygirls]

Originally Posted by mandelyn82

Oh... your Pekins aren't setters, if you want more of them you'll have to hatch or put them under another broody hen. A chicken will hatch a duck if you give her the eggs... but under a Bantam hen it would look really funny.

Pekins will lay, and they may set for week or two, but they're sssoooo domesticated they rarely follow through on it.

Really!?!? Wierd. I really don't want more ducks...they're just to high-matinience for my liking but at the same time, I would love to see little ducklings running around again (provided they are momma ducks problem to look after). If any do hatch, they will be sold when they grow up as 5 is more than enough for me. The chickens I don't mind tending. I have another question though...when can you put them back in with mom? If I did take the eggs & hatch them, I'd want to put them back with mom as soon as possible so I didn't have to deal with the mess. Can that be done or would momma duck hurt them?

[mandelyn82]

Well since the Pekins aren't very broody, momma duck won't even know she's a momma duck if you hatched her eggs. I've only ever heard of one full-bred Pekin setting long enough to hatch. Most give up around the second week or less.

[Fawn Lane Farm]

Everyone gave great advice, so no point repeating it! I have two incubators, the stryrfoam jobbies, and they work great! I have a still air and forced air. I use one for hatching and, and the other for incubating. I've even got an egg turner I bought used that is a lifesaver! You can get so addicted to hatching those cute little fuzzies.

I just hatched out a little blue Orp cross, yesterday. I have Black Australorps, Buff Orpingtons and Exgchuer (sp) Leghorns in the bator who will hopefully join him sooon.

Just wanted to add: Make sure you don't use newspaper for newly hatched chicks. Supposedly, it causes spraddle leg. Paper towels are better, they allow they little guys to get more traction. Also do not use kitty litter or cedar chips. Pine shavings and shelf lining paper work well, though!


You can get some great deals on ebay on hatching equipment if you keep your eyes open. I got my forced air incubator and auto egg turner on there for around $60.00 including shipping! It was only slightly used.

A good hatching resource is backyardchickens.com. Lots of good info!


ETA: farmergal- love your photos! You're making me want to try duck eggs again. I've never had any luck with them, I I feel giulty wasting eggs