Advice on hatching chicken eggs

There are lots of things you need to be aware of when hatching chicken eggs for the first time, the most important thing is to make sure you source your eggs from a reliable breeder and obtain the freshest eggs you can. Most reputable breeders will send you eggs which are younger than 10 days old and this makes a huge difference to your hatch rate. If your eggs are not fresh and are over 10 days old, the chances of them hatching are limited.  Always also make sure that you leave your eggs to stand for 24 hours once you receive them in the post, this allows for them to settle as they will have been moved around quite a lot during their journey to you.

Your incubator is the next vital thing and you must make sure your temperatures are exact when hatching eggs. The temperature of the incubator should be 101.5 degrees in a still air incubator, measuring from he top of the eggs and in a fan forced incubator, the temperature should be 99.5 degrees. The humidity in the incubator should be 60-65% for the first 18 days and 80-85% for the last three days. It is vital that all of these temperatures are correct, especially changing the humidity in the last three days as this will definitely change the outcome.  If your temperature and your humidity are inaccurate then you will have serious problems at hatch time.

Incubators come in all different shapes and sizes and are different in the way that they function. Some incubators have automatic turning of the eggs and others have not. Always be careful when lifting the lid and examining your eggs that you don’t let too much heat escape and too often. Eggs can be candled at about one week and this will give you a good idea of whether the eggs are fertile or not.

You will normally have about a 75% hatch rate if you buy from a reputable breeder but remember that there is no way of knowing whether the eggs are fertile or not before one week.

Hatching eggs is fun and can be lucrative and if you follow the guidelines carefully, you should be very successful.

Always also remember that different eggs will take different times to hatch and the temperatures and humidity will change depending on what eggs you are hatching.

A hen in Guizhou in China has laid an egg weighing almost half a pound that contained another egg inside it. Report by Jeremy Barnes. Subscribe to ITN News! …
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