Egg Incubator Information: The Dos and Don'ts of Incubating Eggs
If you have decided to attempt to raise chicks, if you have purchased and now own an egg incubator, you will also want to understand the basic dos and dont's associated with the incubation of eggs. Through this article, you are provided with information about how to use properly your egg incubator and how you can go about making sure that you bring your eggs to a healthy and fruitful gestation.
Depending on why you are involving yourself in the egg incubation process, you may want to start an egg incubator only when you have accumulated a certain number of eggs. In this regard, you need to know that you actually can store fertilized eggs in a cool place for up to three months. There are a number of places that you actually can store fertilized eggs before you place them into an egg incubator. For example, you can store these eggs in a refrigerator. You can also store them in a cool basement (perhaps in fresh straw) or in a similar place. Again, research has demonstrated that it is possible to store eggs in a cool place for upwards to three months and still successfully incubate them in an egg incubator.
Once placed in an egg incubator, it normally will take about twenty days for chicken eggs to hatch. Different types of birds can have different incubation periods. However, most people who use egg incubators do so to raise chickens.
The temperature in the egg incubator should be maintained between 96 and 98 degrees. You should never deviate from this range as you will either slow the incubation process if you dip even a bit below this temp range or you will kill the unhatched chicks if you deviate upwards even slightly.
The humidity in the egg incubator is also important. You should strive to keep the humidity in the incubator at approximately 50 percent if at all possible. Some incubators come with an automated turner. If that is not the case, you will want to make sure that you schedule time each day to turn the eggs in the incubator about five times.
At about fifteen days you can do what is called candling to see of the chick inside the egg is progressing. This really involves holding the egg up to a light (or candle as historically was done) to see what is going on in the egg. You actually should be able to see the outline of the chick as well as some fluttering movement in the egg. It is the light change in the egg that causes the chick to more around. You will want to quickly return the egg to the incubator after you make this check. You need to keep in mind that even if you see no movement that does not mean the chick is not living. You will want to recheck eggs with no movement again in a few days.
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