Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
emerge in a natural setting knows that hens pick at their eggs, helping their young out of
their protective shell. While it is probably not a good idea to do this for every pipping
chick, it does little harm to occasionally save a special bird.
Know Your Birds
Understanding the needs of your species of birds and the particular requirements of the
breeds classified within that species will help make the hatching experience more suc-
cessful. For example, not all chicken breeds take 21 days to hatch, just as not all ducks
take 28. Geese are variable and hatch anywhere from 28 to 30 days.
Once you acquire several breeds, you'll learn which birds are the early indicators of
your success rate. In the duck world, the Khaki Campbells are early hatchers. For ex-
ample, eggs set the same day and at the same time from Khaki Campbell and Buff ducks
will always have the Khakis happily pipping at least 24 to 36 hours before the Buff
ducks do. If you see that the Khaki Campbells are getting stuck in the shell or struggling
because of a lack of humidity, you can adjust the humidity to help the remaining birds
get out of their shells.
Some breeds are out in just a little more than 19 days and others can take as long
as 22 and still be fine. At first, if you haven't done your homework, you may think
something's wrong with your incubator. But if you do the research required to know
your bird varieties and their incubating needs and start recording completion times and
dates for each step of the process, you'll soon have a deeper understanding of the di-
versity that exists in the poultry world, and is evident in every stage of a bird's life, even
reproduction.
Although I can assure you that if you give incubating eggs your focused attention and
care you'll eventually have some chicks to raise, problems with incubation and hatch-
ing are not uncommon. Trial and error is often the best way to learn. Adjusting to the
environment, species differences, incubator quirks, and humidity levels are among the
minutiae that are the necessary and vital concerns of the raiser.
To help you hatch a healthy batch of chicks, an Incubation Troubleshooting Chart is
included in appendix E, where you can find it with ease when things are taking a turn
for the worse or to validate your hatching intuition.
