Our first birds are hatching — we’ve got ten Bresse chickens (and I learned that there’s both a dominant white gene and a recessive white gene. French flocks go for the recessive white because you’ll always get white birds. American Bresse have dominant white … which means you get a colored bird!)
We had 12 eggs to get in the incubator, but Anya got six more eggs at lunch and another egg later in the afternoon. So we’ve got 19 eggs in the incubator
We’re setting up the incubator tonight to get our first dozen turkey eggs going.
I need to leave the incubator sit overnight to get the temperature and humidity regulated. Tomorrow, we’ll be putting the eggs into the incubator.
Notes:
General:
Pointy end down, may need to leave empty space between eggs so they fit
Temperature
Forced-air incubator, so set to 99.5 degrees F (monitoring for temps between 99 and 100 F)
Humidity
First 25 days, relative humidity 50-60%
Final three days, increase humidity to 65-70%
We’re about to start incubating eight duck eggs, so I wanted to record the temperature and humidity settings that I’ve found for the chicken, duck, and turkey eggs (well, future turkey eggs! We managed to get five male turkeys last year)
| DUCKS | |||
| Start | End | Temp | Humidity |
| 1 | 25 | 99.5 | 55-58% |
| 26 | 28 | 98.5 | 65% |
| 28 | hatching | 97 | 70-80% |
| CHICKENS | |||
| Start | End | Temp | Humidity |
| 1 | 18 | 99.5-100.5 | 45-55% |
| 19 | Hatching | 99.5 | 65-70% |
| TURKEYS | |||
| Start | End | Temp | Humidity |
| 1 | 24 | 99-100 | 50-60% |
| 25 | Hatching | 99 | 65-70% |