Which is best for you, an incubator or a broody hen?

Breeding and hatching chickens is very rewarding. You could use an incubator and brooder plate, or go down the route of using a broody hen, but which is best for you? Fiona & Hugh Osborne guide you through the choices.

- 

WHERE TO START

The obvious place to start is that you want to hatch chickens. That sounds so simple and it need not be more complicated than that, so let’s hang on to that as we start to look at whether an artificial incubator or a broody hen is a better option for you. If you don’t have chickens at the moment, then your only option is to use an artificial incubator but now we’re just stating the obvious (sorry, we couldn’t resist). could

We've been asked many times, whether using an incubator is better than a broody hen and we've always said either “It depends”, or “For us, it’s a broody hen”. You'll notice we used the qualifier “For us” as everyone is different, has different facilities, different pressures on their time. We do use incubators at certain times so it’s not an either / or decision.

THE COCKEREL QUESTION

It would be irresponsible to start any article advocating hatching or breeding chickens without addressing the elephant in the room. In this case the elephant is male chicks that hatch. We won’t get preachy about this but it is best to have a plan before your start to deal with this. After all, 50% of everything you hatch will be (on average) male. You'll see many adverts for “free cockerel to a good home” or simply “free cockerel” and there’s a good reason for that... people want hens.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Timing is the main reason why most people choose an incubator rather a broody hen. You can get an incubator out and turn it on whenever the whim takes you. This is very, very appealing, especially if you want the chicks to hatch in a very specific time period. You can select the date on which you want the hatch to happen and work backwards by 21 days. That’s the day to set your eggs in the incubator.