Hatching Chicken Eggs

Hatching Chicken Eggs. Here is how hens - and incubators - hatch eggs, an intro to the process of incubating and hatching chicken eggs for anyone with their own flock of chickens.

Plus we'll link you to incubator info, so you can get one that will serve you well.

Assuming you're keeping a rooster or two, your efforts to keep chickens for eggs, meat, or both, may be likely to involve the gratifying process of sustainably setting and hatching some of your own chicken eggs. The resulting chicks will serve many purposes - egg layers, flock breeders, or a delicious entrée at your dinner table. 

---

This page describes how hatching chicken eggs is accomplished, both by the hen and with incubators.

While the incubation process is easy enough, the equipment you use might in the long run save you money or cost you money in losses if too many eggs fail to hatch.

The Chicken Egg Incubator page will help you select an incubator that will be perfect for your needs.

How Hatching Chicken Eggs Works

These links below will take you to topics on this page - click on any of interest to you to skip to that section, or keep reading!

• Hatching Chicken Eggs with an Incubator
• How Hens Naturally Hatch their Eggs
• How Egg Incubators Mimic Nature
• Controlling Temperature
• Controlling Humidity
• Turning the Eggs
• Day 21 - the Hatch
• Chicken Egg Incubators

---

Hatching Eggs with an Incubator

Incubators for chicken eggs allow you to hatch chicks without entrusting your valuable hatching eggs to a broody hen that hasn't quite made up her mind. Incubators supply the essential temperature, humidity, and regular egg turning, giving you control over the hatching process. The results are almost always superior to the best efforts of even the most excellent broody hen.

Incubators certainly can incubate many times more eggs than a whole flock of broodies could reliably hatch.

Poultry egg incubators typically result in an improved hatch rate, fewer spoiled eggs, and a better growth rate in the chicks, since you will have control of the chicks' diet from day one.

Most chicken egg incubators can be adapted for the larger duck eggs and goose eggs. Some incubators offer the after-market purchase of trays that accommodate very large poultry eggs.

Hens Hatching Chicken Eggs Naturally

If you understand how a hen naturally hatches her eggs, you'll understand how and why egg incubators function the way they do. Functions built into incubators in order to mimic the conditions under a hen are: Temperature, humidity, and egg-turning.

In nature, hens nestle into a grass and feather-lined indentation in the soil, hidden by foliage that also shields from the elements. She lays her eggs, one by one, rejoining the flock until she is ready to brood. The eggs lay dormant in the nest, not yet developing, until the hen decides it is time to set on her eggs.

(In case you wondered, this is why eggs each laid on different days all hatch together within the same 24-36 hour period.)

Once she commences the 21-day incubation period, her body heat and presence on the nest stimulates all the eggs at once to begin developing. For 21 days, she sits on the nest with very few interruptions, getting up only occasionally for food and water.

Have you ever reached under a broody hen and felt the damp, hot feathers under her? You might even feel her very warm moist skin as she may have plucked feathers out to line her nest. This enables her eggs to directly soak up her heat and moisture as their development progresses.

The eggs are 102F (38.9C) on the hen side, but much cooler on the nest side. As the egg warms to the body temperature of the hen, her instincts warn her that it is time to turn the eggs over. She does this with her feet. With the warm side now downward and the cool side of the eggs resting against her underside, the hen once again relaxes into her nest.

Day after day, several times per day and night, the hen shuffles the eggs with her feet during the long hours setting on the nest. Until approximately day eighteen (18).

On day 18 the hen enters a trance of sorts. For three days she doesn't move a muscle, doesn't get up to eat or to drink. Egg shuffling completely stops. The chicks can now reorient themselves inside their eggs so that they have access to their air cells, until one by one, they hatch on or close to day 21. 

The Best Egg Incubator "Broods" Eggs Like a Hen

How Egg Incubators Mimic Nature

The best incubators for chicken eggs fill in admirably for the hen. They consistently maintain the correct temperature and humidity around the eggs. Additionally, they will also have an egg-turning mechanism to turn the eggs regularly, along with a way to turn off the egg-turner toward the end of the incubation process.

A good incubator will hatch up to 100% of the eggs entrusted to it, but even an average incubator will hatch some eggs as long as the chicken tender is attentive to the needs of the hatch.

Temperature:

The incubator maintains a steady temperature of approximately 99.5F (37.5C) throughout the incubation process. A slightly lower temperature during the first 18 days will delay the hatch or possibly kill some of the eggs. A slightly higher temp will result in earlier hatches. Too high for too long will kill the eggs.

The 99.5F temp seems to be the sweet spot between the hen's body temperature of 102F, and the cooler temperatures of the nest itself.

Regarding Chicken Egg Incubator Temperature:

You CAN leave the incubator temperature on 99.5F (37.5C) for the entire hatch.

But consider this: Some suggest one could reduce the incubator temperature from 99.5F to approximately 99.1F (37.28C) at the point of lockdown (day 18), or even earlier (perhaps by day 15) during very warm summer months. This takes into account that the egg begins to produce some of its own heat as it nears the hatch date. In fact, as the incubation nears completion, the top of the egg shell can actually hit up to 104F (39-40c).

In an incubator there is no hen atop the eggs to help channel away some of that extra heat. This is why some breeders like to dial back the temperature inside the incubator from 99.5F to 99.1F, which better approximates the natural process of hatching chicken eggs.

Humidity:

Humidity is usually maintained at around 45% - 50% until the first pips appear.

Some people prefer a "dry hatch," meaning whatever the ambient humidity is will be the same humidity inside the incubator. This doesn't work for the very driest climates.

But whether you apply additional moisture or prefer dry-hatching, the actual 3-day lockdown time before the hatch (day 18 to day 21) requires a boost in humidity in order that the egg membranes don't dry out, shrink, and imprison the chick inside the egg.

Recommended humidity levels are 55% to 65% during the hatch. Note that as the eggs hatch and the wet chicks begin to dry out and fluff up, all that moisture is released into the incubator. Watch that the humidity level does not rise so high as to drown the unhatched chicks still inside their shells. I like to release the additional humidity if it tops 70%. 

Egg Turning:

An automatic egg turner is well nigh essential, in my opinion. If left unturned, the embryos will end up sticking to the membranes and being unable to develop correctly or to unzip themselves at hatch. (Some people turn stored eggs regularly before placing them in the incubator. I do not, and thus far think that turning may be less important while viable eggs are still dormant.)

More than one inexpensive incubator can be purchased without a turner, especially styrofoam ones. In this case, you will need to turn the eggs yourself, consistently, over 18 days in a row. Turning at a rate of every 6 hours or so, around the clock, is one way to do it, or, consider the following tip...

Turning Tip:

If you need to turn the eggs yourself, set up an odd-numbered schedule, like five or seven times per day. For example:

• For a 7-time turning schedule, turn the eggs every 2.3 hours during waking hours on average, and give yourself 8 sleeping hours. 
• For a 5-time turning schedule, turn the eggs on average every 3.2 hours and still get a good night's rest. 

These suggested schedules ensure that you won't lose sleep at night, and for each 8-hour stretch the eggs will be turned onto the opposite side.

Turning During Lockdown:

At lockdown on day 18, the egg-turning needs to stop completely. Some incubators are programmed to automatically stop turning the eggs on day 18. If your incubator does not have this feature, then remove or deactivate the turner. Take the eggs out of their trays and place them directly onto the screen or mat or floor of the incubator. At this point, one watches and waits for the first pips!

Day 21 - The Hatch:

On day 20 or day 21 of hatch, one by one, little cracks, or pips, appear in the shells. It feels miraculous, and it almost is.

The little chick's beak comes with a "pip tooth" or "egg tooth," a tiny triangular shaped sharp projection glued onto the tip of the chick's upper beak. As the chick reaches hatching size, it stretches inside the egg, ripping with that pip tooth into the membrane so it can breathe the air in the air sac. Around the same time, the pip tooth fractures the egg shell. That first little crack is called a "pip." 

A few hours after pipping, the chick suddenly seems to "wake up" to an urgent need to hatch. It pivots in the shell, the pip tooth unzipping the shell bit by bit, crack by crack, until the entire top portion of the shell pops open with the latest stretch of the chick's legs and neck. The tired chick slides out of the shell, mission accomplished.

Within twenty-four to thirty-six hours or so, every chick in the incubator should have hatched. And within a few days, the chicks peck at and dislodge each other's pip tooth, which fall off and are never seen (or needed) again.

Chicken Egg Incubators

Chicken egg incubators maintain all the needed hatching conditions, sometimes with a little help and attention from you.

Successful hatches of darling fluffy little chicks are the result!

There are a LOT of egg incubators available on the market, of various price points and capacities, that will hatch nearly any species of poultry eggs, including goose, ducks, chickens, quail, partridge, guinea fowl, and other exotic or tropical fowl. Adjust the incubator settings and time frames to match the needs of the species.

Click here to explore our reviews of various chicken egg incubators. (Link coming soon.) Perhaps you'll find that certain incubators are better suited to your needs than others!

1. Home
 ›
2. Hatching Chicken Eggs

Translate This Page
Traduire Cette Page
Traduzca Esta Pagina