Hatching Our Own Eggs

My husband and I were planning to build an incubator from an old Styrofoam cooler following instructions we downloaded from Home Grown. but once we priced all of the parts including tax and shipping we found that we could buy an incubator for just a little more money. When we priced all the parts we needed to build the incubator we came up with $60.00 without any thermometers or hygrometer or automated egg turner, tax or shipping. We found an incubator which has everything needed including fan and automatic turner for $110.00 plus shipping from Nasco. So as much as we thought we wanted the experience of building our own incubator we decided to go with the Nasco Science incubator Kit. I ordered the Kit 3/29/2008 and started collecting eggs for incubation.

Which eggs to collect?

I consulted several sources including “Chickens in Your Backyard” by Rick and Gail Luttmann and “Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens” by Gail Damerow and a few internet sites like Mississippi State University Extension Service , The Easy Chicken for Beginners , and University of Illinois Extension Incubation and Embryology . All sources agree that the best eggs to collect should come from healthy birds, be of normal size (not super huge and not small) and have a normal shape and come from the nest already clean. Since I do not trap the chickens when they lay I have no way of knowing which eggs come from which chickens but all of my birds look and act healthy to me so I am making the assumption that eggs from any of my birds will be fine.
Size I can do something about. My 10 hens are producing eggs of various sizes so I will collect only the eggs that fit the description “large” which means to me that they fit in the egg cartons for large eggs. I have some that are clearly small for this carton and some that are clearly too large for this carton.
The shape of my hen’s eggs are also somewhat variable. Some of my eggs are more oblong than I think is usual and some have an exaggerated egg shape. Some have rougher surfaces than others. I will select only the eggs that have the typical “egg” shape and a smooth shell.

The Eggs must not be cracked.

I have read that some eggs will have micro fractures which cannot be seen without candling and these should not be used for hatching. We candle with a flash light through a toilet paper tube in a dark room. This is sufficient to show cracks in the shell allowing us to select only eggs without cracks. Candling also reveals the size and shape of the air space in the egg. It is important to use fresh eggs which have small air spaces. It is also important to use eggs with the air space at the large part of the egg.

In this picture there are no cracks visible and the slightly darker semi circle at the large end of the egg is the air space.

Storing the eggs before incubation.

Since I have only 10 hens that lay 7 to 9 eggs/day and not all of those eggs will make it through the culling process it will be necessary to collect and save eggs over several days or a week before starting the incubation process. Most sources suggest an environment that is draft free not too humid or too dry (not sure what that means) and between 40^oF and 60^oF. Apparently below 40^oF the embryo will die, above 60^oF the embryo will start to develop. I am going to try to store my eggs in a Styrofoam container in the garage which tends to stay warm in winter and cool in summer (about 50^oF. I will not be controlling humidity this way so I will be taking my chances that the eggs will not dehydrate significantly in the 7 to 10 days it takes to collect enough eggs.

How do I know my eggs are fertilized?

I have a rooster who regularly services my hens (they do not seem to like it much. There is a lot of squawking and complaining going on)but I have been told by a friend who used to raise chickens for show that the Rooster might be “shooting blanks” as he put it or might not be young and strong enough to service all of my hens. One rooster for 10 hens is a reasonable ratio but I still wanted to be sure that most if not all of my eggs are fertilized. We started checking for signs of fertilization when we open eggs to eat. A fertilized egg will have a tiny cloudy white spot (germinal disc) on the yolk perpendicular between the two white stringy structures (Chalazae) which hold the yolk in place in the white of the egg. What we found is that all of the eggs we cracked to eat have a geminal disc so I guess my rooster is doing OK.

The small whitish circle in this picture is the geminal disc.

So I am now ready to start collecting the eggs.

Today I was able to collect 6 clean eggs but only 5 of them were shaped perfectly. The egg on the right side of the picture bellow was slightly bulbous on the large end and pointier than expected on the narrow end. I used this egg in the picture above to provide a photograph of the geminal disc.

So I now have 5 hatching eggs waiting for the incubator to arrive. I will collect a few eggs for storage every day until the incubator arrives or I have 12 eggs to hatch whichever comes first.

Tagged as: candeling eggs, hatching eggs, incubation