Incubating and Hatching your own Eggs
INCUBATING AND HATCHING YOUR OWN EGGS
There are several reasons to incubate and hatch poultry eggs artificially. One is to increase or maintain your own flock. In this case, an understanding of poultry genetics will be helpful in selecting parents for mating. Another reason is as a classroom experience for K-12 students. 'Embryology in the classroom' is a popular activity and can be adapted for a wide variety of science, and non-science, topics.
INTRODUCTION
HATCHING EGGS
It is important to start out with clean, fertile hatching eggs.
INCUBATION
Incubation of poultry (University of Missouri)
Hatching your own chicks (University of Maine)
Quail
Incubating and hatching quail (Raisequail.com)
TROUBLESHOOTING FAILURES WITH EGG INCUBATION
It is unlikely that you will have 100% of your eggs hatch. If you get particularly low hatchability it is important to break out the eggs that did not hatch to try and figure out what the problem was and make corrections for the next hatch.
It is also a good management practice to candle the eggs after the first week of incubation and remove any infertile or dead embryos.
Candling eggs (University of Illinois)
Egg candling and breakout analysis (University of California)
Common incubation problems: Causes and remedies (University of California)
Chick embryo malpositions and deformities (University of Florida)
INCUBATORS
Article - The five best incubators (The Chicken Hub)
CQF Manufacturing (Savannah, Georgia)
Stromberg's (Pine River, Minnesota)
Building an incubator (University of Illinois)
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