When it comes to farm expenses I’m pretty frugal, and buying new chicks on a semi-annual basis makes me cringe. For years I forked out money to the feed store each year, wincing with every dollar I spent on the precarious little lives of day-old chicks, with no guarantee the tiny balls of fluff would reach maturity.
There didn’t seem to be much help for the expense: layers need to be replaced after they’ve passed optimal production levels and meat birds call for a hefty investment in new livestock each season. While you can spend a lot of money on chicks from a hatchery, in the end you often have little control over the quality of the birds you receive, and limited options in species of birds to choose from.
And then, I stumbled on a solution to the entire chick-purchasing dilemma. While driving one Sunday down a lonely country road I came upon a small, unobtrusive sign that said simply: Bird Auction: Agricultural Hall, Sunday, 1-4 p.m.
I had no idea what a bird auction was, but what I discovered was something that would make any bird lover’s heart beat faster: a barn filled with birds of all species in small cages stacked one on top of the other, three or four stacks high.
I strolled through the rows of birds, chatting with other farmers, and looking at species of birds I hadn’t seen before in anything other than pictures on the internet. Rare, heritage, hard to find . . . they were all there. And even better, they were for sale!
Although visions of returning home with cages piled in the back of my truck flooded my mind, I quickly realized that the prices for breeding stock were a little too high for my blood. I also didn’t have much interest in breeding heritage birds to sell the offspring, which is the best way to recoup that kind of investment. What I did discover at the bird auction was something even better than live birds: hatching eggs.
Many of the bird breeders were also selling fertilized eggs, at very reasonable rates of about five dollars per dozen. Here was the chance for me to hatch the chicks myself, with more control over the end product, more selection in bird species, and at a fraction of the cost of buying them from a hatchery.
I went home and looked into it further to find that not only were hatching eggs available at bird shows, but they could also be purchased online. Delivered straight to my door.
Unconvinced that self-hatching was the better deal financially I spent some time calculating the cost to raise a store-bought chick to maturity for broilers and the cost to raise a hatched-at-home chick to maturity. Even with the initial expense of an incubator it didn’t take long to recoup that cost in the purchase price of chicks.
In the end I cancelled my chick order from my feed store and ordered a small incubator and three-dozen hatching eggs. And I’ve never looked back.
While hatching your own eggs takes more time and effort, once you start you’ll appreciate the benefits. No longer will you be worried about losing a few birds, you can always breed more! And if you get tired of paying the price of hatching eggs you can always keep a rooster and ensure a constant supply of fertilized eggs.
Over the years I’ve picked up a few tips to success; for anyone getting started incubating eggs at home here’s a few pointers:
- Store fertilized eggs properly: Store unwashed eggs with the small end down at room temperature until ready to be incubated.
- Do a test run: Run your incubator for a few days to make sure it’s operating properly before adding eggs. Ensure you are maintaining the manufacturer’s recommended temperatures and humidity levels.
- Invest in an egg turner: Without an egg turner you are literally tied to your incubator, committed to turning eggs every few hours.
- Fill the incubator with each hatching: The time, effort and resources needed to hatch one egg is the same as hatching 24 eggs. It makes sense to hatch as many eggs as your incubator can hold with each hatching.
- Check temperature daily: Don’t assume the temperature will remain the same. Temperature fluctuations are common and opening the incubator, adding more water, and a newly hatched chick will all change the interior temperatures.
- Candle eggs several days after incubation: This will ensure you aren’t wasting your time trying to hatch unfertilized eggs.
- Get organized: If you will be manually turning eggs create a chart and mark your eggs with an X on one side and an O on the other. This will allow you to correctly track when the eggs were last turned. You would be surprised how often you end up staring at the incubator asking yourself if you turned the eggs that morning.
Candling 101
There’s no point in wasting time and effort incubating eggs that aren’t viable. If you purchase hatching eggs you can be fairly certain they will have been fertilized, but if you have a rooster and you’re just hoping he’s making the rounds in your coop, you’re better off to candle eggs shortly after starting the incubation process. A good rooster to hen ratio is approximately one rooster for every 8-10 hens.
Here are instructions for a basic candling set-up using a piece of cardboard and a flashlight. Candling should be done approximately 7-10 days into the incubation period.
- Cut a hole roughly one-inch in diameter in the centre of a piece of cardboard or the bottom of a cardboard box.
- Find a dark room or closet and take the flashlight, cardboard and egg in with you.
- Rest the egg on top of the hole lengthwise, with the fat part of the egg resting over the opening.
- Place the flashlight beneath the egg and manipulate the angle until the egg is lit up.
- Inspect the egg for signs of fertilization (dark spot, veins, signs of movement).
- Amy Hogue