There are two ways of hatching baby chicks from fertile eggs – using an incubator or
under a broody hen.
Which is best?
Let’s look at some of the differences.
There’s a lot to learn about using an incubator to hatch chicks – you need to maintain just
the temperature, humidity, ventilation, turn the eggs enough and in the right way and stop
turning at the right time.
With a broody hen, she knows all that stuff and does it all for you.
So, for expertise, the count goes to the broody hen.
As long as you have fertile eggs available, you catch hatch chicks in an incubator any
time, all year round.
But a hen is only broody when her body says it’s time to be broody.
She’s influenced by the season, temperature, light and darkness, but you can’t make a
hen broody, you just have to notice when she is broody and take the opportunity.
And once a batch of chicks has hatched, a hen is pretty much busy with those ones and
won’t go broody again for several months, whereas as soon as one batch is hatched in
your incubator, you can put in the next batch.
So that’s definitely one for the incubator.
One broody hen can effectively incubate about 8 – 10 eggs of the same size as her own
breed.
That is, a big hen can brood about 8 – 10 big eggs and a bantam can brood 8 – 10 bantam
sized eggs, while a bantam can brood only a smaller number of big eggs.
Incubators, on the other hand, come in a range of sizes that can incubate anything from 3,
to 12, to twenty, to hundreds of eggs all in one batch.
There’s no doubt an incubator is better if you want to hatch a lot of chicks.
Incubators are expensive, costing anywhere from about a hundred dollars to thousands
of dollars.
Even second hand or homemade incubators are still expensive by the time you include all
the thermometers and hygrometers and so on, especially if you want automatic turning.
Now not all breeds of hen will go broody, so if the breeds you want to own are not the
broody kind and you want a broody hen you might need to buy a hen of a broody breed
just for that.
So you might buy a hen specially as a broody and she might cost a bit, but not hundreds
of dollars.
There’s no doubt a hen is cheaper to obtain than an incubator.
What about running costs?
An incubator takes electricity to run so that’s an ongoing cost you have to pay.
And you don’t need electricity to run a chicken!
But you do need to feed and house and care for her, even when she’s not actually hatching
eggs for you, so maybe the running costs are about even.
Things can go wrong.
With an incubator, you can get a power failure and suddenly your eggs are not being kept
warm any more and they can die within a few hours if you don’t have a backup plan.
A hen doesn’t get a power cut, but she can suddenly decide she’s not broody any more,
she can get frightened off the nest by something, even a thunderstorm, again leaving the eggs
to get chilled and the chicks inside to die.
In both cases it’s a good idea to have a backup plan, whether it’s a second broody
hen waiting for fertile eggs or a warm insulated cupboard to hold the temperature until the
power comes back on.
By the way, if you do have to resort to Plan B, make sure whatever you do you don’t over
heat the eggs.
The developing chicks will survive a while at temperatures a bit lower than ideal, but
they will quickly die if you get them even a degree or two too hot.
So something like a hot water bottle is usually not a good Plan B.
Candling is the method of looking inside the egg at the chick developing inside by shining
a light through the egg shell, in the dark.
It’s incredibly amazing and wonderful to see the chick develop from nothing to a tiny
spot inside a spider-web network of blood vessels, to a little live thing that moves
about inside the shell and grows until it takes up all the room inside.
Of course you can candle eggs from under a broody hen but it’s disruptive to her and
risky as well as not so convenient, so you really shouldn’t do it often throughout
the 21 days she’ll be sitting on those eggs.
Whereas as long as you’re careful not to damage the eggs or let them cool too much,
you can watch the whole miraculous process if the eggs are in an incubator.
It’s wonderful to see this beginning of life.
There is no doubt that it’s more natural for a chick to hatch under a broody hen.
Even before the egg hatches, the hen talks to the chick inside the egg and eventually
the chick even peeps back.
The newly hatched chick is cuddled and sheltered amongst the hen’s feathers in a way that
no brooder box will ever duplicate.
To be honest it doesn’t seem to make much difference in the long run – the chicks
grow up just as fast and strong and healthy and well-balanced regardless of how cosy or
sterile are their earliest surroundings.
But there’s no doubt that hatching under a broody hen is more natural.
Having watched the beginning of life and the tiny chick grow inside the egg, it’s just
awesome to watch that final struggle to chip away at the egg shell, make at first one small
hole, then crack a line all around the shell, from the inside!
With no tools!
And not much muscle either!
Until this tiny fragile chick breaks out of the egg shell and into the world.
That’s something you don’t get to see if the whole thing takes place under the hen,
in fact you probably won’t even get to see the chick for a day or so, but if you hatch
in an incubator, you get a chance to watch the whole drama.
On the other hand, once those chicks start to get around, there is nothing cuter than
seeing them poke out from the hen’s feathers or nudge her to get her to make space for
them to crawl underneath.
That’s just a delight to watch and you only get that with a real live hen.
So what’s the score?
Well, they each have advantages.
One isn’t really always better than the other, it just depends on what you want, what
you have, and what suits your purpose, and I hope you now have a good idea of which might
be best for you.
What do I do?
I do both.
I mostly use an incubator and raise the chicks in a brooder box.
I occasionally have had a hen that did the whole job from 21 days of sitting on eggs
all the way to raising the chicks, but often I do a combination in which I actually incubate
the eggs in my incubator and then give the newly hatched chicks to a hen.
So that way I get the best of both.
And I can have as many chicks as I want.
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