Anyone here incubate chicken eggs here?

[Wolfer]

I first got chickens because I like to hear a rooster crow in the mornings and to keep the coyotes close by for hunting.

Its good that my chickens are constantly pooping out babies. They need lots of replacements.

[alleyoop]

Chickens are 21 days ducks run out to 28 days. If you use an auto turner then you'll wanna discontinue it a day or so before hatch date

[country gent]

Our biggest preadators were skunks ( you havent live till youve smoked a sckunk in the coop with a 12 gauge. LOL. Even the chickens wouldnt go back in), weasels, minks, owls and Hawks. The occasional coon or possum. Remember also the preadators love the cover of night so figure 1:00 in the morning when its cold and a good thunderstorm blowing its time to be out there protecting the chickens. Once live trapped a predator getting into the chickens was a stray cat that must have went 15 lbs 4 neighbors stopped lossing chickens when it was caught.

[HollowPoint]

When I was a kid there used to be a small toy-like incubator that was sold as a hobby incubator. I worked on a ranch so I had access to fertilized chicken eggs. I saved up some money and my mom kicked in a little to make up my lack of cash.

If I remember correctly it held three or four eggs only. It had a transparent domed lid and some sort of regulated heating element at its base. When those eggs started to hatch I was so excited that I took the lid off the incubator and started picking away the egg shells to help those baby chickens get out a little quicker. That over exuberance may have caused the death of all but one of those chicks.

The one surviving chick grew to be a fine meal for a family of eight kids and one mom. That toy incubator only survived that one go around. It gave up the ghost about midway through our second try at incubating chicken eggs.

On a side note: In my later years, I'd purchased my first home and during the course of doing some yard work and clean up I stumbled across what appeared to be a tiny clutch of eggs under some old lumber. At first glance they resembled black-widow eggs so my first inclination was to just crush them with my foot. The odd thing was that when crushed under foot, these little eggs had what appeared to be yokes in them. I didn't think much more about it at the time.

Fast forward about three or four years after living in that home; I was doing some more yard work when I came across another of these tiny clutches of eggs. This time I examined them a little more closely. They looked like micro-chicken eggs so, I brought them inside and put them in an old clear plastic container.

As luck would have it, at that same time in my life I was in school learning photography in order to earn a certificate in digital imaging. I placed my camera in its tripod and aimed it at these little eggs. I kept it there for about a week; never really ever taking any pictures until one day I walked passed that clear container and notice that one of those little eggs had been emptied out. Within the next day and a half some of the other little eggs started showing signs of hatching. They turned out to be lizard eggs.

I don't know what type of lizards. To me they were just some of those little lizards that we find living and hunting in our back yards. For a guy who lives near the very center of the city, I've found lizards, snakes, rabbits, hawks, quail and exotic birds of various kinds in my back yard at some point or other.

I did take some pic of these eggs; they're in black and white though. I'd have to dig them out of my junk file to prove what I'm saying. It was my first year of photography so they aren't the best quality. This was back when I was learning to process photos the old-school way. I set up a dark room in my bath-room. the chemicals I needed were laid out across my bath tub. This is an "Incubating Chicken Eggs" post so I don't want to step on the OP's toes here.

Regarding the incubation of chicken eggs; here in Arizona, the weather is such that if you time things just right you really don't need an incubator. So long as the temperature is within the temperature range of that produced by the momma-hen as she lays on her eggs, those chicks will hatch all on their own. You may have to turn the eggs every once and a while but they will hatch.

HollowPoint

[leftiye]

Thay keep breaking when I sits on 'em.

[HollowPoint]

Thay keep breaking when I sits on 'em.

You just have to align them end to end with no more than three or four in that line of eggs. That way they settle right into your butt crack without being damaged. Plan on loosing at least one of those chicks when they start to hatch. It will most likely be the unlucky egg that happen to sit directly under the gas-port.

If it does survive it will probably bare the resemblance of disoriented crack-baby.

HollowPoint

[Clark]

My grandfather had thousands of white leghorns in the 1920s and 1930s.
He designed an incubator with dimes for contacts.
Other chicken ranchers came from miles away to see how he did it.
I hear he never overcame arcing and dimes wore out.
When i was 8 years old I built a buzzer and it had terrible arcing.
When I was 10 I looked inside my grandfather's commercial door bell buzzer, I saw hysteresis designed in mechanically.
When I grew up I used electrical hysteresis to make a charge pump to bootstrap a supply for an error amplifier for an FET linear regulator with super fast regulation for RF. My design is all over China in cell towers now.
I made money from talking to grandpa about incubators and brooders.

[TheGrimReaper]

I do. Just have started with pharaoh quail. I got 10 goose eggs now too. Just watch the temp and keep lots of H2O in there.

[johnson1942]

if you want your son to have more than a little fun, you two walk the fence lines and when a grouse or pheasant jumps up, look to see if their is a nest. if their are eggs take them quickly to put under a setting hen or in a device to hatch them. it is more fun under a setting hen as she will care for them and when they get older and want to fly around some it will almost worry her to death.

[HollowPoint]

if you want your son to have more than a little fun, you two walk the fence lines and when a grouse or pheasant jumps up, look to see if their is a nest. if their are eggs take them quickly to put under a setting hen or in a device to hatch them. it is more fun under a setting hen as she will care for them and when they get older and want to fly around some it will almost worry her to death.

We used to let some of our hens incubate duck eggs along side of here own eggs when our ducks would abandon their nests. I always got a kick at how frantic the momma hens would get when those little ducklings fearlessly jumped into the irrigation ditches. The baby chickens they were incubated beside seemed to just look on in amazement too.

Funny as heck.

HollowPoint

[jmorris]

Day 10, you can clearly see the air cell on the left side and it moving around inside.

[victorfox]

If I recall correctly chickens take 21 days, geese and ducks 28, muscovy ducks 40 or 42. In addition to regular varmints take great care with rats if available. Once the SOBs killed a cute goose pet we had when I was 9 or 10. My father could smash him with a stick and from that day until today rats and mice are killed on sight. We had a possum problem too then I moved my bedroom closer to the coop. Almost every night I had to grab my 32ga and run outside to dispatch them. One night I shot two in succession. And yes hens do a good job brooding and caring of about any egg you put under her.

[SSGOldfart]

We have a buff orphanington hen who will go broody at the drop of a hat, she's a great incubator whom controls her own temp and humidity, if we didn't drive her off a nest now and then she would set until she died..she's on a nest now in about two weeks we shod have our first peepers, she's 4 years old and this is her 5th or 6th hatch. When she gets broody we just stick eggs under her , if they are not fertile or not to her liking she'll just roll them out, she seems to like 7 at a time. Never did a electric incubator, we've had chickens 4 years and have never had to.

We have a buff that does the same thing and this year one of our silver lace Winedots is locked on the nest. We are starting a new load next week,just got a new rooster about 6 days ago,he was released in with the hens yesterday all's well in the hen house.

[jmorris]

First chick pipped at 4:03 today then another two rows back 30 min later. Getting close...

[jmorris]

21 days is a long time for a 4 year old to have to wait but I think it was worth it.

[labradigger1]

I think if a person were to make an incubator the bomb would be to unplug your pid from the pot and hook it to your diy incubator