Temperature regime in an incubator for chicken eggs

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To obtain young stock of broiler chickens in an artificial way, farmers use special devices. There are certain rules, observing which, you can achieve a high percentage of hatching healthy and viable chicks. Air humidity and normal temperature in an incubator for chicken eggs are of paramount importance. But before pawning the original product, it must be carefully selected and prepared.

Incubator temperature for chicken eggs

Breeding chickens artificially is an interesting and not very difficult process. It is within the power of both farmers with many years of experience in raising poultry and beginners. The main thing is to know everything subtleties of incubation and follow the recommendations of specialists.

Preparatory stage

Preparing eggs for laying is an important stage, which has its own characteristics. The first thing you need to pay attention to is the quality of the product and the time of its origin. So, an egg that a laying hen laid for the first time in her life or all subsequent ones that appeared between 8 pm and 8 am cannot be laid in an incubator. The likelihood that they contain embryos is very small.

In addition, deformed and cracked specimens or those whose shells have an uneven color are not suitable for incubation. It is best to choose medium-sized eggs: this way the development of embryos will occur evenly, and almost all chicken eggs will bite at the same time, the maximum difference is 24 hours (1 day).

It is advisable to place the selected material in an incubator within 6 days. In order to securely preserve the food before laying, it must not be kept in the refrigerator. To preserve the original qualities of the original product, you need to take a sheet of plywood or other dense material, cut round holes with a diameter of 4.5-5 cm in it and carefully place them in each egg with a blunt end down.

The air temperature in the room where the eggs are stored, depending on the timing of overexposure, should be in the range of 10-18 ° C with a humidity of at least 65%. Additionally, the room should be equipped with a good ventilation system.

Cleaning the eggs before setting them in the incubator

Immediately before placing in the incubator, each egg must be cleaned of contamination and disinfected in one of 2 ways:

• Within 20 minutes with formaldehyde vapor. Composition: 30 ml - basic substance, 30 ml - water, 30 ml - potassium permanganate.
• Within 3 minutes with an aqueous chlorine-lime solution. Composition: 20 g of the main substance, 1 l of water.

If you need to process a lot of eggs, the first method is preferable.

The sterile product should be placed in the incubator very carefully. You need to wash your hands well, put on medical latex gloves, take the egg by the sides with two fingers and transfer it to the container.It is impossible to take for sharp and blunt ends, since the protective shell can be damaged and the specimen will become unusable.

In incubators, special trays are provided on which eggs must be placed so that their sharp ends look down. If you accidentally put the starting material on the wrong side, all its contents will begin to press on the air chamber, and it will move, and if this happens, the embryo will not develop correctly and die as a result.

Air Chamber Requirements for an Ideal Egg:

• location at the blunt end,
• the maximum height is 2 mm.

Egg incubation temperature

In matters of artificial hatching of young stock, the key factor is the optimal incubation temperature, which must be evenly distributed within the incubation chamber. As a rule, this parameter should be considered in tandem with humidity. There is even a special wet thermometer, the readings of which differ significantly from the dry thermometer.

This is explained by the fact that simply by measuring the air temperature in the incubator, it is impossible to accurately capture all the characteristics of the environment. But a complex life develops in eggs, so you need to be attentive to all the subtleties.

In addition to the main ones (humidity and temperature), there are equally important additional environmental parameters, such as uniformity of heating, ventilation and drafts. Only careful adjustment and constant monitoring of compliance with all these factors will result in the hatching of chicks of the highest quality in a mass and timely manner.

Many household budget incubators are not able to evenly warm the air in all parts of the container, so there is a possibility that embryos will develop faster in some eggs. To even out the wrong situation, you need to buy another device or periodically swap the eggs in the tray.

The processes taking place inside all eggs (chicken, duck, goose and even turkey) heat the shell to a certain temperature. It is on these data that the rules for setting the temperature regime in the incubator are based. To make the artificial environment as close as possible to the natural one, during incubation, the device settings must be changed every time after the development of the embryo moves to a qualitatively new level.

Dependence of incubation parameters on its stages

Please note that this information will help you to properly adjust the settings in the incubator for chicken eggs only. If you plan to breed other birds at home, for example, ducks, it is better to look for information on how to do this in other articles and video sources. Since both the timing and regimes for each species of birds should be set individually.

Incubation steps and recommended modes

It is important to maintain the temperature regime in the incubator, even when the egg is still waiting for its incubator bookmarks... The result depends on the correct storage.

As long as the temperature in the egg is lower than the physiological zero of the bird, no processes occur in it. That is why the room where eggs are kept awaiting incubation should be slightly cool.

According to numerous studies of scientists, it is still unclear why the longer the eggs are stored, the less chance of offspring from them. But the fact remains. It was noticed that the best hatchability is shown by specimens that were placed in the incubator after 2 days from the moment they were carried by the brood hen. But you can keep an egg in storage as long as you like, the main thing is to do it at the right temperature:

• from 1 to 3 days - 18-20 ° С,
• from 4 to 7 days - 15-18 ° С,
• from 8 days and longer - 10-12 ° С.

Moisture readings should range from 65 to 80%. Due to the long shelf life and parameters of the parent flock, the incubation properties of the product may be reduced.In this case, in order for the eggs to be well preserved, the humidity must be increased to 85-90%.

Before laying in the incubator, it is necessary to hold the egg for some time in a room after the storage room, where the air temperature jumps within 22-25 ° С.

Incubation should take place in four stages:

• 1 - from the 1st to the 7th day;
• 2 - from the 8th to the 15th day;
• 3 - from the 15th day to the first squeak;
• 4 - from the 1st squeak to the bite.

Incubation mode table

The incubation mode table is designed to help cope with the hatching of chickens. This table contains all the recommended settings you need to know for incubating at home and how often eggs should be turned during incubation. It is imperative to twist the source material so that the embryo does not grow into the shell. The laying hen always does this in natural conditions.

Many modern devices automatically turn eggs, but if only the simplest home-made incubator is available and this function is not available, you should be ready for 15 days, including at night, to take proper care of the eggs.

First step

After laying in an incubator, the processes resume in the eggs, which began when they were in the chicken. As soon as the material becomes warmer than the set physiological zero, the development of the embryo and cell division resumes. The first stage is the formation of tissues, which will subsequently turn into vital organs.

On the third day, the head and heart of the future chicken are already visible in the egg. At this time, the correct uniform ambient temperature is especially important, since the climate around the egg strongly affects the rate of cellular development and the delivery of oxygen from the external environment to the embryo.

Best of all, these processes occur when the eggshell is heated to 37, 7-38 ° C (you can measure it using an IR thermometer). In the incubator, set the temperature slightly higher.

Second phase

These days, the internal organs of the embryo are formed inside the egg and it is gaining mass. Moreover, the rate of weight gain in embryos increases significantly, especially if the optimum temperature in the incubator for chickens is set. Here without ovoscopy not enough:

• If it became noticeable that the embryos are developing unnaturally quickly for representatives of the chicken family, it means that the temperature in the incubator has jumped very much, it is enough just to reduce it, and everything will return to normal;
• if, on the contrary, development is practically not carried out, you need to slightly increase the degree of heat in the settings.

At the second stage of incubation at home, the surface temperature of the eggshell should be 37.5-37.7 ° C. A slight deviation from the norm is allowed. But under no circumstances should the eggshell be colder than 37 ° C and hotter than 38 ° C. Otherwise, embryos will develop inharmoniously, many may even die from overheating or hypothermia.

Stage three

During this period, the maturity of the internal organs and the embryo as a whole begins. The percentage of dry matter increases, and the fluid in the tissues becomes less, and therefore the embryo is already able to feel with its internal organs the stress caused by the temperature regime. If the incubator climate is favorable, the chick will develop according to plan; if not, growth will either accelerate or slow down. That the first, that the second option is undesirable.

It is necessary that the air temperature in the last days was slightly higher than in the previous stages of incubation. The critical boundaries dangerous for embryo maturation are below 38.1 ° C and above 38.8 ° C. Ideally, if the shell is heated to 38.5 ° C (plus or minus 0.2 ° C).

We must not forget that the process is accompanied by the active release of metabolic heat from chicken eggs (heat released from the starting material due to the metabolism that takes place inside). It is required to take this into account when setting the settings.

From the 16th day until the chicks bite, so that the temperature in the incubator does not rise to a critical level, ventilation should be turned on every day for several hours. If the device does not have an overheating sensor, it is necessary to independently measure the shell surface every 2 hours and, if necessary, perform forced ventilation, for some time opening the lid of the container with eggs. When the air is blown around the shell, its temperature is regulated, so the possibility of overheating is minimized.

The fourth stage from the beginning of the squeak to hatching

By this time, the chicks are almost ready for birth, they can turn over on their own inside the shell, so it makes no sense to additionally twist the eggs in the incubator. The main thing now is to provide an easy bite in ideal conditions. The table shows what temperature is required in the incubator, but the data given in it is approximate. During this period, it is worth listening not to dry facts, but to the chickens themselves.

Not a single table will tell better than small squeaking lumps, which are already impatient to crack the shell and see the big world around them, that they are ready to be born. It is important to listen to the chickens: if they feel good, their squeak is even, calm, they sing melodiously with happiness. If they are frozen, hysteria and loud squeaks begin inside the incubator. If the incubator, on the other hand, is unnaturally quiet, then the chicks are hot - it is important to hurry to lower the air temperature before it is too late.

Before breaking through the shell, the chicks begin to spin inside it and peck at the walls around the perimeter, 3-4 powerful blows are enough for the fortress to surrender and split in half.

Equipment

Without special equipment, it will be difficult to achieve good results from incubation at home. First of all, it is necessary to purchase instruments that measure with increased accuracy. For example, to check the temperature of an eggshell, you need to use a hygrometer and an infrared thermometer, and without a reliable incubator, it is difficult to breed a good percentage of healthy young.

If you are just starting out in poultry farming, choosing an incubator is a very important procedure. There are household appliances for home use for several dozen eggs, equipped with a minimum set of necessary functions. There are technically sophisticated devices such as the Cinderella. They are also intended for non-industrial use, but they have a huge number of settings: from a humidity control system, temperature regime and automatic ventilation to an overheating protection system and a hypothermia regulator. There are some experienced poultry farmers who breed strong and healthy livestock with homemade appliances.

Before purchasing this or that model of an incubator, it is important to analyze your goals and planned scale, to consult with people who have been successfully hatching young animals for several years. In any case, it makes no sense to buy expensive semi-industrial equipment at once. You can start with a few dozen eggs and a simple incubator to practice hatching and understand the relationship between incubation parameters and embryo development.

Each device has instructions for use, which indicate all its functionality, the output circuit is indicated and the optimum temperature for this is prescribed.

Common causes of death in an incubator include:

• low or high temperature,
• high or low humidity,
• wrong schedule of airing and coups.

It is extremely important to know how many degrees the eggs withstand at each stage of their development and set an exclusively permitted indicator. What kind of temperature is acceptable, the table of incubation modes will tell you.

If you have the financial opportunity, it is better to overpay a little, but buy an incubator that will automatically maintain the temperature and humidity at the set level, ventilate the chamber and turn the eggs. It is important to take into account that even fully automatic devices do not guarantee stable, flawless operation. This is a technique, and it breaks down from time to time, so every day several times it is necessary to control the incubation process and, if necessary, take measures to eliminate defects in the operation of the device.

The main thing is to remember that great productivity depends on human-created conditions.