When you want to hatch chicks, you can choose to use natural or artificial incubation. With natural incubation, you utilize the period when your chicken is broody, avail fertilized eggs and let her hatch them. Unfortunately, you cannot plan when to hatch your chicks since you have to wait until your chicken goes broody. Further, there is a limit on the number of eggs you can put under a single hen.
That is why farms and day old chick businesses in Kenya are embracing artificial incubation. With artificial incubation, you can place your fertilized eggs at any time and wait for the days required to hatch. Further, you can place many eggs provided your artificial incubator allows. Some incubators can hold up to 20,000 eggs. However, to ensure you hatch a large percentage of the fertilized eggs you place in your incubator, you must master the needed management skills. Let us discuss how you can manage your artificial incubator and ensure success in your chick hatching project.
Select Quality Fertilized Eggs
The first step in ensuring successful incubation is choosing good-quality eggs.
Source of the Eggs
You can source eggs from your farm or purchase them from reliable sellers. If you produce the eggs from your farm, choose parents with a good lineage and proven fertility i.e., the laying hens and the rooster that fertilizes them.
But if you source the hatching eggs from a seller, ensure they have a track record of selling fertilized eggs with a consistent hatch rate.
Evaluate the Egg Quality
Start by evaluating the external parameters before moving to internal ones.
External Parameters
External features to look in your eggs include:
- Egg Shape
Your eggs should have a blunt side and a distinguishable sharp end. The blunt side contains a small air cell. Misshapen eggs are undesirable for incubation.
- Egg Shell
The egg shells should be smooth and free from pimples or ridges.
Internal Parameters
You will need to perform egg candling to test whether the eggs are good enough to go to the artificial incubator. Candling involves shining a bright light through an egg to see its inside. Perform candling to check the following properties:
- Albumen
Eggs have an inner thick or outer thin albumen. A good quality hatching egg should have a higher proportion of the thick albumen than the thin albumen. Further, the albumen should be transparent with a yellow or greenish cast indicating the presence of riboflavin.
- Embryo
The embryo develops from the germinal disc, a doughnut-like opaque ring with a translucent centre. Your eggs should have an embryo of about 3-5mm.
- Yolk
Good quality hatching eggs have a uniform yolk colour without meat or blood spots.
Setting Up Your Incubator
Location and calibration are the two crucial factors you should consider when setting up your artificial incubator.
Choose the Appropriate Location
Place your incubator in a suitable location, away from windows or doors to avoid drafts. Further, a shaded area is preferable to avoid direct sunlight.
Extreme temperature changes can affect the incubator’s performance. Therefore, you need a location with optimal temperatures particularly 37-38 degrees Celsius.
Perform Calibration
Calibrate the temperature and humidity settings to ensure accuracy and reliability throughout the egg incubation period. You can check the calibration instructions in your incubator manual.
Temperature Calibration
Have a reliable thermometer that can measure the accurate temperatures inside the incubator. You will need to place the thermometer at the same level as the eggs and leave it for at least 30 minutes to stabilize. After the duration, check the readings on both the thermometer and the temperature setting screen of your incubator. If there is a difference, adjust the temperature reading on your incubator accordingly. For instance, if the temperature on the thermometer reads 37.5oC, and that of the incubator reads 37.5oC, the incubator temperature calibration is correct. You wont need to change the readings on your artificial incubator.
But let’s say the thermometer reading is 38.5oC while the incubator reading is 37.5oC, you need to calibrate the incubator temperature to 38.5oC so it matches the thermometer.
Humidity Calibration
Measure the humidity inside the incubator using a reliable hygrometer. Check the humidity readings on both the incubator and the hygrometer. If the incubator humidity reading differs from that of the hygrometer, calibrate the hygrometer accordingly.
Proper incubator calibration ensures the temperature and humidity levels are accurate. Therefore, you can provide the best possible conditions needed for successful egg incubation.
The Incubator Management Procedures
Once you place your eggs in the incubator, you need to provide the optimal environment for incubation and perform the required procedures correctly.
Maintain an Optimal Environment
Check the temperature and humidity levels regularly and adjust if necessary. Both factors are crucial in the development of embryos.
Temperature
During the first 18 days of incubation, the temperature should range between 37.5°C and 37.8°C. From the 19th day, the temperature should be set at 36.1°C and 37.2°C. During this period, the chick produces their heat.
Temperatures above 40.5°C can cause embryo fatality. Higher temperatures may also lead to hatching of chicks with crooked toes and beaks. Low temperatures are not safe either. They can lead to the hatching of chicks with twisted necks.
Humidity
The eggs have porous shells that allow water to pass through to the outside. However, the right amount of water must be lost within a given time. That is why correct humidity is critical to ensure that the eggs do not lose too much water or retain too much moisture with time which can affect embryo development.
Optimum humidity depends on various factors. That is why you find different sources suggesting different incubation humidity levels. Research is still underway on the ideal humidity levels for hatching eggs.
You can adjust the humidity level by placing containers of water (at body temperature) inside the incubator. Some farmers place wet sponges in the incubator or spray the incubator with clean warm water through the ventilation holes.
During the incubation period, too high humidity is more of a problem than low humidity and may lead to hatching problems such as dead-in-shell or fully formed and not hatching chicks. However, the humidity during the last day of incubation should be higher to ensure the shells are soft enough for the chicks to break out.
Ensure Ventilation
Sufficient ventilation is crucial to ensure the growing chicks get fresh air otherwise they may suffocate or choke. Ensure at least two holes remain open during the incubation period. Some incubators have an adjustment with a slider that opens or closes the vent.
Turning the Eggs
Rotating or turning the eggs is necessary to prevent the chicks from sticking to the shell. It ensure the embryos receive equal exposure to nutrients and heat from all sides, thus promoting their healthy development. Automatic incubators are available which eliminates the need to manually turn the eggs. But if your machine is not automatic, you need to perform the rotation yourself.
Turn the eggs gently 3-5 times a day at regular intervals for the first 19 days. You can use a pencil to mark the blunt end of each egg with a similar letter e.g. O and the sharp ends with a different letter e.g., X. It helps keep track of the eggs you have rotated. Ensure your hands are clean before touching the eggs to avoid contamination. Further, avoid sudden movements of the eggs since that could harm the embryo.
Perform Egg Candling
Candling eggs at different stages during the incubation allows you to determine whether the embryo development is progressing well. However, the less you handle the incubating eggs the better. It would be ideal to limit your routine candling to about three times i.e., before placing eggs in an incubator, on the 7th day of incubation and the 18th day of incubation. Candling will help remove the eggs that have not developed or begun developing but stopped since they may explode and scatter bacteria in the incubator.
Removing Hatched Chicks from the Incubator
Don’t be tempted to help the chicks out of the shell during hatching. You may cripple or infect your chicks. All you need at this stage is to maintain the right humidity. Six to twelve hours after hatching or once the chicks are dry and fluffy, you can remove them from the incubator.
Dealing with a Power Outage
A power outage during the egg-hatching process is a major cause of concern especially if you don’t have a backup source such as a generator. So, what should you do when there is power interruption to your artificial incubator?
A power blackout may delay hatching by some days and significantly decrease hatchability. But you don’t have to do away with your precious project. It is possible to save the hatch.
In case the power goes off, the first step should be ensuring the eggs remain as warm as possible until the power returns. You may place an insulation material such as a cardboard box or a blanket above the incubator. Then light candles in jars and place them under the box that covers the insulator to keep the temperature warm until the power returns. Be cautious not to have any flammable material close to the candle flame.
You will remove the insulation material and the candles when the power returns. Be sure to perform candling 4-6 days later to determine whether there are signs of life. If you don’t see any development after six days, you may have to halt the project.
Record-Keeping
One practice we may want to emphasize when hatching chicks with an artificial incubator is record keeping. It offers valuable insights for future improvements of your incubation process. Some of the data points you should record are the number of eggs you placed in the incubator and the number of chicks hatched after the incubation period, egg rotation intervals, temperature and humidity readings and other observations you made during the incubation process.
Using an artificial incubator to hatch eggs is a great technique that allows you to get many chicks at any time. However, achieving greater success in hatching healthy chicks requires you to choose quality fertilized eggs, maintain an optimized environment, and follow appropriate incubation techniques.