Herethic question about incubation parameters

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Hi friends,

i have no experience with hatching of any birds so far, but i am very interested to learn as much as i can before i will give it a try with some of my (unlaid) eggs from my ducks.
So i always read that the temperature must be kept exactly at a certain value (i remember 37.5°C, but i don't know if that's correct for all poultry, nevertheless…) fluctuations of a tenth of a degree are will spell disaster for the next ten generations… Thermometer(s) need to be calibrated at three measuring points and the humidity is important too.
It all sounds like very delicate and complex procedure.

How do chickens and ducks and all the other bird mommas keep the temperature of their eggs so constant? How do they adjust the humidity? Where do they buy their their thermometers? Do they pay those with eggs?

How did people in the past incubated their eggs? -The microprocessor was invented in the early 70's.

Long story short: I feel that all this hovering over the 'bator, that constant monitoring and all that complex technology is some kind of over-kill.
What do you think?

 

[R2elk]

Hi friends,

i have no experience with hatching of any birds so far, but i am very interested to learn as much as i can before i will give it a try with some of my (unlaid) eggs from my ducks.
So i always read that the temperature must be kept exactly at a certain value (i remember 37.5°C, but i don't know if that's correct for all poultry, nevertheless…) fluctuations of a tenth of a degree are will spell disaster for the next ten generations… Thermometer(s) need to be calibrated at three measuring points and the humidity is important too.
It all sounds like very delicate and complex procedure.

How do chickens and ducks and all the other bird mommas keep the temperature of their eggs so constant? How do they adjust the humidity? Where do they buy their their thermometers? Do they pay those with eggs?

How did people in the past incubated their eggs? -The microprocessor was invented in the early 70's.

Long story short: I feel that all this hovering over the 'bator, that constant monitoring and all that complex technology is some kind of over-kill.
What do you think?

For best results, the temperature should be kept at a constant temperature. The target temperature may be different for different species but for most the same temperature will work well. Fluctuations of a tenth of a degree are meaningless and will have no effect on the outcome. Fluctuations of +/- 5° (F or C) can spell disaster.

For good outcomes, calibrated thermometers are a must. They only need to be calibrated at 100°F or 38°C. Unfortunately most people do not have the ability to calibrate their thermometers at those temperatures which is why the multiple calibration points is recommended.

The calibrated thermometers are necessary because most of the incubators have thermometers that may or may not be trusted.

Mother birds do not need thermometers or hygrometers because they were built to operate at the optimal conditions for hatching their own eggs. They do vary things by plucking their undersides to be able to have direct contact with their eggs. They also are very frequently moving the eggs about so that no egg stays in the same position for too extended a period of time.

A microprocessor is not required to hatch eggs. Keeping the eggs at the proper temperature does matter and yes thermometers have been around for a very long time. The original mercury thermometers were very accurate.

You can hatch and do it very well without a hygrometer but you still have to control the humidity. Some people use the weight loss of the egg as a guide for adjusting the humidity. Other people candle the eggs and use the air cell as their guide to adjusting the humidity. I use a hygrometer because it requires less of my time to know whether or not I need to adjust the humidity.

Now that I know the way to meet the necessary parameters, I preheat my incubator, open the valve from my water reservoir to the water tray in the incubator and put the eggs in the incubator. I next turn on the auto turner. Whenever I happen to pass by the incubator, I will glance at the position of the trays to verify they have turned and also glance at the water reservoir to make sure it is not about to run dry.

I do nothing else until it is time for lockdown. I remove the egg trays from the incubator, candle the eggs and remove any without development, blood rings or early quitters. The rest of the eggs go into the preheated hatcher where I can peek through the door window to see pips, zipping and hatching until I am ready to remove hatched chicks, keets or poults from the hatcher.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Definitely overkill. Did you know ancient Egyptians were incubating eggs and brooding the chicks thousands of years ago? The Chinese did too, not sure if they learned form each other or on their own.

If the average incubating temperature is a half or a whole degree Fahrenheit too warm they can be early, maybe two days. They can be that late if the average incubating temperature is too cool. It's better if you are pretty close, if you get too far out they can die, but nature was nice enough to give a window.

The egg material is pretty dense. It takes a while for the core temperature to change even if the air temperature is off. I had a hen go back to the wrong nest and her eggs were really cold to the touch. She hatched 11 out of 11 eggs. Stuff like that is not a good thing to happen but it is not necessarily a disaster.

Humidity is important, they've proven that a broody hen can adjust the humidity under her. But again Nature was nice enough to give a fairly large window of humidity that works.

If you are hatching 1,000,000 chicks a week like some commercial hatcheries do, the ones that hatch the broilers, then just a small percent difference in hatch rate can become significant. With us, not that much really. The closer you are to ideal conditions the better your hatch rate and those commercial operations have spent a lot of money to determine what those ideal conditions are. We should strive for those ideal conditions, we'll do better. But if we are off a percent or two, assuming we would even notice, we are not going to lose our jobs.

For what it is worth, the commercial hatcheries average around 90% hatch rate of the eggs they set.