The secrets behind maximising incubator hatch rates

Buying quality point of lay hens can be an expensive proposition these days (even if you can find a local source of the breed that you want). Incubating fertilised eggs can save a great deal of money and make many more breeds accessible. If you already keep poultry that includes a cockerel, an incubator means that you can hatch their eggs either to increase your flock or to sell. Hugh & Fiona Osborne have been using incubators for many years and have learned that getting a good hatch means attention to detail.

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QUALITY MATTERS

Whilst great incubation technique will maximise your hatch rate, if you start out with inferior equipment or poor-quality eggs, a good technique will only “make the best of a bad job”. A good quality incubator can be bought for a couple of hundred pounds and a really very poor one for about fifty which seems like a great saving but, having used both, it’s a false economy. A rare breed point of lay hen is worth fifty pounds, so hatching three more hens pays back the cost of a quality incubator. We have seen hatch rates increase by far more than that in a single hatch and quality incubators can last for decades so it pays to “buy once and buy well”. We strongly recommend Brinsea incubators (we have several in sizes from 7 egg to 56 egg) and to buy a larger size than you think you need. You don’t need to fill an incubator and having more space gives each chick lots of room to hatch without bumping into other eggs also trying to hatch! It also means that when “chicken maths” kicks in and you want to increase the scale of your hatching you don’t need to upgrade!

The other vital factor in good hatch rates is to obtain quality eggs. This is unfortunately much harder than obtaining a quality incubator. When we started incubating, lots of hatching eggs were sold on eBay and delivered through the post. We had very mixed results buying these. To give high hatch rates eggs need to be

Fresh,

Unwashed,

From a highly fertile breeding group with well tested fertilisation

Stored and transported extremely carefully without shaking or extreme temperatures