New Homestead Skill, Incubating Chicken Eggs

We choose to incubate eggs at home because never have a reliable broody hen on a schedule we want. At this time we are incubating chicken eggs each month so that we have a continuous supply of meat. Our typical hatch is 14 chicks out of the 22 eggs in the incubator, and our general hatch rate is over 50 percent. Check out our FREE printable at the end of this post to help keep your incubation project on track.

Supplies

• Nurture Right 360 Incubator
• 22 fertilized and not dirty chicken eggs
• Distilled water
• Calendar or hatching app

Instructions

1. Setup the incubator and make sure that it maintains temperature and humidity 99.5 F and 30% – 50% humidity the first 18 days
2. Carefully place all of the eggs into the incubator and begin your 21 day count down
3. Monitor the humidity daily and be sure it is over 30% but under 50% for the incubation period.
4. Candle the eggs on day 13 so that you can pull out any eggs that did not grow or that stopped growing. This can be done more often for education and monitoring purposes, but one candling before hatch is a must.
5. Day 19 is Lockdown day for the eggs! Remove the automatic egg turner piece, and increase the humidity in the incubator. Remove the red block for side “B” of the water trays. Fill side “B” slowly until the humidity reaches 60% -70%.
6. Now the hard part leaving the lid shut at all cost until after hatch day. Leaving the lid on the incubator helps prevent the egg membrane from drying out and the little chick failing to hatch due to the sudden lowering of humidity.
7. Around day 20 you should start to see pips on the eggs, and maybe even hear some cheeping from the chicks.
8. The chicks will slowly start zipping around the shell, and then the first little chick will emerge, and the excitement increases.

Check out this FREE Printable for Incubating Chicken Eggs

This 21 day tracker will help keep you on track while you are incubating chicken eggs at home or school. We have also included a few teaching moments to increase the knowledge everyone gains while waiting on the new chicks to hatch. Get the FREE printable HERE!! No strings attached!

Come back to get our Egg Candling Guide to continue increasing your homesteading skills no matter where you live. Check out our other blog posts to start a new project while you wait on the new chicks to hatch.

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