Natural chicken breeding day 1 to 28!
Natural breeding is the cheapest and best way to raise chicklets. It gives stronger chicks and its just very cute. The trouble is finding quality mothers, sometimes you have to let the mother breed out eggs of another bird. The second option is incubators. Oh boy incubating is addictive!
Incubator
Natural breeding is best but often not a option. Especially bigger batches or certain breeds simply don't breed very well. The Rcom and Brinsea are the best. I personally had also great results with DIY incubators.
Tips to improve the outcome
- Have healthy hens and rooster. Don't put more than 5 to 10 birds per rooster.
- Don't store eggs more than 2 weeks and you have to keep turning them during storage.(twice a day) The temp has to be a stable 12 degrees.
- Select the eggs. Dirty, misshapen, cracked can't be used. Use a special lamp to check if the egg is fertilized and uncracked.
- Turn the clean incubator on a day before you use it.
- Monitor the humidity, best is to have a rather low humidity of around 40% for the first weeks and only the last 3 days you increase it to 70%.
- Don't help the chicklets to get out of their eggs. Don't open the incubator let them dry up for a day.
Now you can sent them to a warm protective box with water and special chicklet feed. If you have a caring mother hen you can let her join. Keep a good eye on it for the first hours if the mother doesn't accept the chicks you can get big problems.
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Very helpful thanks, I myself have chickens of my own. I started with 7 brown shavers and now I have sometimes up to a hundred chickens with breeds like light Sussex and leghorns.
I use natural breeding to hatch my chicks, but recently I
tried out Incubating for the first time. And I thought it was much harder than just leaving the eggs under the chicken.