21 days ago we set out to incubate our first set of backyard chicken eggs as a family. From egg fertilization to full incubation we’ve worked to provide an ideal Eco environment for our chicken eggs to hatch in. Throughout the whole process of raising backyard chickens I have to say that incubating chicken eggs has to be the funnest part! Watching these little eggs hatch for the
first time and start to break out of the shell is an experience like no other and I highly recommend it. In watching our lit
In this being our first experience of fertilizing eggs and following it through to full incubation I’ve come up with few tips that have helped us get to this point. In hatching these little chickens mature you truly see God’s hand at work in the creation of life.
- Rotate the eggs every four to eight hours – like I mentioned in my previous post on fertilizing eggs, it’s extremely important during the first 15 days to rotate the eggs in the incubator back and fourth. Ensure that the temperature doesn’t get above 102 degrees, and make sure there is plenty of humidity.
- After 15 days then you can take them out of the egg rotator (if you have one), and just leave them in the the humid incubator until day 21.
- A day or so before day 21 you’ll possibly start to notice cracks in the side of the egg, and even possibly cherping from the baby chick. Here is a short video of our chicks at day 20, and they are just starting to hatch out of the egg after a full incubation period.
How are Chicken Eggs Fertilized
As spring has been quickly approaching, we have been actively researching how to fertilize our own eggs. After a couple of failures, we’ve started on our second batch of fertilized eggs and are working on incubating six eggs. So far (fingers crossed), it looks like the eggs are fertilized and are progressing nicely.
Along the way, this has been completely a new learning experience for my family and I. I’ll be extremely interested to see my boys’ reactions to the chickens hatching.
As we’ve been learning thus far, there is a lot more work in fertilizing eggs then just placing a rooster with a hen and waiting 21 days.
Here are the steps we’ve taken to fertilize our chicken eggs.
- Buy a rooster and a hen – “what came first the chicken or the egg?” Obviously, the chicken came first! DUH! Honestly though, you’ll need a male and female like they taught you in 7th grade human anatomy class. Once you’ve got a rooster and hen (or two), then segregate them into a separate pen.
- Make a roosting area – every good hens need a nice home to lay her eggs with some bedding (preferably hay or straw) to roost on the egg to keep it warm.
- Make sure the eggs don’t freeze – chicks have the best chance for success by being raised up in the spring/early summer. This means that you need to get an early start on incubating and fertilizing. Start fertilizing your eggs in January-March time frame. Since it’s still extremely cold out during these months, it makes it important to check your chicken house frequently. This is ensure that the eggs don’t freeze.
- Get them in an incubator asap – after you’ve removed the eggs from the chicken roost, then get them in your incubator as soon as possible. One tip I have in doing this is to write the date on the egg that you put it in the incubator. This way you’ll know how many days it should be in the incubator.
- Rotate the egg from side to side every four hours – this was a big lesson learned from my initial batch of eggs. I didn’t realize that if the egg attached itself to the side of the egg wall, then it wouldn’t grow. Unbeknownst to me, a normal hen will rotate her fertilized egg in the roost.
Well, this is our first post on how to fertilize chicken eggs (we are currently at day 15). Next week, I’ll post part 2 on fertilizing chicken eggs, and hopefully have some fresh new pictures on our baby chicks hatching (after 21 days). In the mean time, here a great video from Murray McMurray hatchery my home state of Iowa. They’ve got a great commercial business model for producing and shipping out baby chickens to consumers around the US.