How to Incubate Chicken Eggs

I've been incubating a while now, and learned a lot about how to get the best results for any situation you find yourself in. So here it goes.

Before you start collecting or purchasing hatching eggs, make sure you have familiarised yourself with your incubator. Test the settings and make sure it can maintain the temperature.

Never trust either the analog or digital temperature reading on your incubator, have a analog thermometer that you can test yourself, with boiling water. Brewers thermometers or medical ones are good ones to get.

If you are lucky enough to have an incubator with a humidity gage, don't trust that either. Although this does not have to be as accurate as your thermometer, it is better to know it is not completely off. For most of us, incubators don't come with them,  So buy one you can salt test or has instructions how to calibrate. i.e. wet cloth method

Hatching Egg Storage 

Store eggs no longer than 10 days, 7 is better.

Store eggs at 16 to 18°C and at 70 and 80% humidity, and if you really need to store them longer,  at 10-12°C 

Turn your stored eggs at least 2 to 3 times a day.

Incubator Temperature

Always preheat your incubator, and wait until the temperature is stable at where you set it.

Set a still air incubator to 38.2°C and a fan incubator to 37.5°C

Turning

I never understood why some instructions say don't turn the first few days. As we have been turning during storage, so ignore that, unless you are incubating shipped eggs, which I will write about in a separate post.

Turn your eggs as often as you can, but always an uneven number of times a day. Three times a day is the minimum a hatching egg must be turned, but if you can do more then 5 or 7 times.

Cooling

Cooling is also important for the chicks development.

On the 3rd day of incubation start cooling the eggs once a day for about 10 minutes. If you are using a still air incubator this is also the time you should use to move your eggs to different positions, so there are none in the  cooler or warmer spots all the time.

Humidity

On the 10th day it is time to check the humidity, and add water if necessary. From now until 3 days before the hatch date,( lockdown ) we'll want to keep it at around 45% +/- 10%. 

Candling

The less you do this the better, but I recommend you do it before incubation, to check the eggshell and yolk for irregularities like double yokes, calcium deposits and cracks. None of these types of eggs make good hatching material.

Then on the 7th or the 10th day to check fertility and remove any that aren't developing.

Then again around the 14th or 15th day to check the air cell and adjust humidity accordingly.

The last time and chance is the 18th day, to make sure they are all still alive and the air cell is big enough for the chick to breath in, while it pips itself out, Otherwise you may have to make a safety hole in the shell.

Lockdown (three days before hatch date)

Add water to bring the humidity up to 55-60%, I say this because as soon as the first pip happens, the humidity will shoot up to about 65-70% and thats what we want for the hatch. Do not open the incubator until all eggs have hatched. It is critical to keep the humidity in there to let all the eggs hatch.

Chicks can survive 3 days in the incubator without food and water, so if need be give those late hatchers a chance of survival. Don't remove any chicks while others are hatching.