How To Incubate And Hatch Baby Chickens

all right welcome back to the ssl family dad channel today I'm gonna talk all about hatching your own baby chicks the last few years here on the farm we have been raising kind of a sustainable or regenerative type of a flock where every year or several times throughout the year we will raise up a new generation of baby chicks and will continue having newer ones always being raised up and then they're had their the heaviest layers for us obviously the healthiest youngest chickens and as the chickens get older or if there's we have too many roosters we'll get those processed for food for us for meat and so we always have a source of eggs and a source of meat kind of throughout the year but a central part of that is knowing how to hatch our own hatch our own baby chicks have you going through the whole incubation process and raising them out and so that's what I kind of go through today so it all starts at the the little suburban coop Peter we have a small kind of breeding flock that we've sustained over the years and I'll take you in the yard here and just show you what chickens we have and then we'll we'll go through the process of collecting the eggs and incubating them and hatching out some baby chicks so this is our small little suburban coop here it's a 30 by 40 foot run in this area and this is the little the little flock that we have that we use for breeding and for our own personal egg consumption here there's ten chickens in here one rooster you'll see the rooster Thor there the big guy I believe that he is a silver lace Wyandotte rooster he was given to us by a good friend thanks Todd and family and we also have a couple other chickens that have been given to us in here we've got a Buff Orpington and then I think there's a nice ax a nice ax brown over there and the rest are bird rocks so we've got the the bird rocks in here as well the Bart rocks over there those are our favorite those are the ones that we we want to continue to kind of raise out as much as possible they're a great dual purpose breed the silver lace wyandotte is also a great dual purpose breed that just means that they are good heavy egg layers and they also are good meat birds they're heavy enough and big enough they grow big enough to to produce a good a good meat chicken also all right so answer a couple quick questions here before we collect some eggs and get into the incubation process number one yes you do have to have a rooster in the flock somewhere in order to have fertilized eggs the the roosters don't fertilize the actual eggs they mate with the hens and then the hens who lay an egg that is fertilized which means that if it's incubated or chicken sits on it for twenty-one days then it will hatch into a baby chick or at least you have a really good chance of that happening and so you do have to have a rooster and the other question I like the answer that I get asked all the time is can you eat fertilized eggs so if I have a rooster in the flock and therefore you know fertilize it mating with the hens and the hens that are laying these fertilized eggs is it is it weird to eat those or is there something different the answer is no there's nothing different there's nothing wrong with those you're not ever gonna tell the difference there's in fact some people say there's there better all these things I there's there's really no difference a fertilized egg you know you're collecting these eggs out of the coop every day so that means they're not incubated that means nothing has started to form in the egg there's no baby in there there's no it's not it's not weird there's nothing nothing different in there there is you you kid find sometimes a tiny little speck in the center of the egg that's about the size of a flake of pepper maybe and that would be the only difference that that you might be able to see if at all so what we do when we're ready to collect our eggs we're ready to start incubating anyways we'll come out and we'll collect eggs every single day it's important that you get them out of cold water so if it's if you're incubating early in the spring say February March in the northern states it's gonna be cold and you want to get the eggs inside as quickly as possible so what we'll do is we'll just grab these eggs and usually we get you know between six and nine eggs per day we'll come out here and collect and so we'll take those inside and I put them in our basement to keep them cool and so you want to keep them you know sixty degrees or so and you want to store them until you're ready to incubate once you get your incubator set up you don't want to add you know six eggs per day the incubator that we have holds 40 eggs or 41 eggs and so we want to save up until we have about 20 eggs we'll put two batches in at twenty eggs and the reason for that is if you put just six or seven or eight or nine or ten eggs in there everyday for you know four or five days six days you're gonna have baby chicks hatching out at different times all over those six days and so it's better to have them all hatching out in batches so you so generally that's what we do you can save up and have them all hatch all at once which I don't we generally do two batches and so we'll collect up save up until we have about 20 to 22 eggs put them in there and then we'll wait another few days collect up another 20 22 eggs and we'll put them in there as a second batch so let me show you the incubator setup that we have it's super simple it was a store-bought store-bought deal give you some tips and tricks on how to get the eggs and they're labeled in and ready to go all right so this is the inside operation and we've got baby chicks here at all different stages and so I'll show you the whole process here so this is the incubator that we use it's a farm innovators I think this was purchased at ESC or possibly Amazon I think that this is available you can buy it on Amazon too and so I'll link it there but this is an open tray style of incubator and there's a small channel on the bottom you fill with water and that keeps here your humidity up in there that's got to have nice humid air to keep the eggs incubated and then I usually have to know a little thermometer they comes with they're just on top of the eggs and that needs to be kept at 99.5 this thermometer up here is actually not quite accurate the one in there is the one that we want to pay attention to so you just adjust the the heat knob here and you just keep an eye on that little thermometer in there and make sure it stays about 99.5 once you put the eggs in there they do need to be rotated every single day at least twice or three times a day I used to just come in here and rotate them every you know everyday lunch dinner and breakfast but there's a much easier way this is the egg rotator the automatic egg Turner that is built for this incubator and I have it out right now because the eggs are hatching you take this out just two days before they start to hatch but this just slowly rotates all the eggs back and forth in there and so you don't have to worry about rotating them if you do not turn your eggs enough the chicks can end up with deformities and so you want to avoid that make sure they get turned and so I highly recommend have any automatic Turner also that as doesn't come with it you gotta buy a separate but it makes a huge difference for raising out healthy chicks alright we're gonna I'm gonna take a look under the hood here's to show you what's going on so you'll see that in pencil I have written the date that I put the eggs in there I have two batches in here right now there's a bunch that was put in there on the 27th of March and a bunch that were put in on the 30th and we've got one see that little cracked in the cracked egg right there you can see a little baby chick starting to break out and it looks like we have another one moving around over there you can see it rocking so these guys all the ones that were put out of a twenty seventh they're all starting to hatch out now and you can see them they're called it's called pipping they'll come through and you'll hear them start chirping through the egg there and they'll slowly zip or unzip that egg they'll start to tear through it and I'll show you a time-lapse of one hatch you know last year here but they'll slowly cut a hatch out of there and pop the egg off and then they'll be in there running around so I generally do not wash the eggs unless you know if they're really dirty and chicken manure on it or something like that I'll clean some of it off but generally I just put it right in here and and I've never had an issue with that with the health of any of the chicks or anything like that so so that guy right there help me out sometimes it takes a couple hours sometimes it can take eight or ten hours they can tip like that pop a hole in it and then notice it there and you'll think they died and sometimes it takes a long time but 21 days at ninety nine point five degrees with keeping the humidity and they're going and you'll you'll get a real good hatch rate two days before so I'm day nineteen you want to take that egg Turner out and stop turning the eggs you just want to leave them be a little air bubble forms in the in the egg in a certain place and they orientate themselves so that they're ready to use that to their advantage as they break out of the egg one of the hardest things about this process is not helping them break out of their eggs there's been several occasions where we've seen them poke through you can see their little beaks and they're you know breaking through there you can see them starting to come out and then you know hours and hours and hours will go by and you think man are they dying what's going on and we have tried to help them out before we've had some that looked like they were dying in there you just can't help them all you have to let nature take its course because they're they're kind of attached to the egg until they're ready to break out of it and if you try to peel the egg back or get your fingers in there number one you're letting cold air in dry air in that can cause issues with them coming out so you could actually be a cause of them not hatching properly by trying to help them and number two if they're not strong enough to get out of the egg there's probably something wrong with that chicken and it's it and unfortunately just just has to take its course and so that's one of the hardest parts are just letting sometimes they don't make it out and sometimes that's just the way it goes but you gotta let them be after they bust out of their shells and we'll let them kind of waddle around an incubator for a little bit and then we'll move them over to this this fancy cardboard box little brooder and we've got two that have come out so far it looks like that one's probably a barred rock mix and maybe a buff Orpingtons they're ordered a nice a mix and so these guys are nice and healthy they have been in here now for this get this guy was the first one to come out the light colored one and this one's been here about an hour or two and so they're they're looking nice and healthy so once you move your baby chicks once I have hatched out and you move them into your rear brooder we just use large flake pine shavings you want to use the large flakes because they will pack at them and they'll try to eat them and they will end up eating some of the little pieces it's just how it goes don't you know 310 C but we've got a couple things in here so we've got a little feeder we do get flock raiser it's an actual food that is for baby chicks high-protein food for them we have our heat lamp in here which is the most important thing I'll talk about that here in a minute I do have a thermometer in try to keep track of the temperature you want them to be about 90 95 degrees for the first couple days you know I'll talk about how we regulate the heat in here and then we've got one of these little mason jar water dishes basically can just use any mason jar screws right onto the base there the galvanized base and fill with water a lot of people will fill that with rocks because they're afraid that the baby chicks are gonna drowned in there I've never had an issue with that they generally if their head dunks in the water they'll operate out of it they're strong enough to to kind of get out of the way if they need to so a lot of people will tell you you know you got to put your heat lamp at a certain height in here and you got to raise it up and make sure that you got just the right temperature in there we've never done that what we do is we we put the heat lamp in here on an angle and so we're getting kind of the most direct heat rate in this area and some of the hottest spot right here and then on the outside of that area is a little bit cooler and they will actually find the temperature that they are comfortable in so if they need a warmer they'll cuddle up in the middle if they need to get cooler they'll head the outside of that that heat area in and that's how they regulate their temperature never had an issue with it they they always do just fine in our breeders and so I wouldn't worry too much about that as long as you have plenty of space like this in here where they can get away from the heat if they need to or get close to it if they need to now one of the things that we do very differently than a lot of people is we don't use those red or white big heat bulbs this is an infrared ceramic heat bulb it doesn't produce any light it just produces Heat and this is a hundred and fifty watts versus the 250 watt light bulb ones and this will last you I don't want to say forever but it'll last a super long time these ceramic are these heat emitters they're for reptile cages and stuff they they were way better than those red red bulbs those red bulbs are going to last you a season if that and they're gonna burn out these things last quite a bit longer and so we order all these on Amazon and highly recommend these over the brooder lights that they normally sell yeah so a lot of people are gonna tell you that you that the red light will help them to not peck at each other if they see blood or anything like that they'll start to kind of packet each other know that that might be true the red light will will help with that but we generally don't have an issue that if we do have a chick that's getting packed out or packed on we'll separate him or her from the rest of them with a smaller little cardboard box in here and let him heal up and then we'll put them back together but we don't worry too much about that red light issue so when they come in for the first time we generally will take them over and show them the food just kind of stick their nose in there maybe put your finger on it tap it a little bit get them interested in it so they know where that's at and then same with the water will break them over and stick their beak in the water and we only need to do that for the first one or two that we put in here because the rest of them are gonna see that a buddy's eating and drinking and they'll follow suit they're interested in whatever the other ones are doing so if one starts packing that food they'll all head over there and start pecking at the food so this is always an exciting time when it's when the 21 days is up we're always in here the girls and I are always just checking the incubator all day all night sometimes we were up late last night you know one started hatching about 1:30 in the morning and so we just want to make sure everything's set up everything's taken care of but that is how we go through our whole entire incubation process from start to finish these guys will stay in here in this little little bathroom area in our house they'll stay in this brooder with the the heat lamp on them for at least a couple weeks probably three weeks just depends on the outside temperature once the temperatures at night aren't dropping below 60 degrees then you you know you can take them out there or if there are over three or four weeks old at that point they can go you know go outside these guys will actually go out and we're starting a separate flock with them and so three or four weeks we'll have them outside and we raise them up for the next generation or the ssl family farm chickens here so we've had a very good good with this process this incubator is pretty cheap as far as incubators ago it's a styrofoam you know incubator and it's actually lasted us you know I think it's been three or four years we've had this now and it's still working just fine for us so you don't need a lot of expensive equipment to do this on a small scale and it's been been working really well if you have questions about the process if I forgot or left something out let me hear from you guys so that stuff in the comments I try to answer all those questions that you may have of course don't forget to hit thumbs up on today's video and subscribe to the channel if this is your first time to the ssl family that channel we'd love to have you tag along for all the the phone we do lots of farming and DIY things and farm animals and other things so let me have you take you on for all that and as always guys thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: SSLFamilyDad

Views: 226,879

Keywords: ssl, ssldad, sslfamilydad, farming, farm, diy, michigan, sustainable, sustainability, family

Id: ERvvxhq5CF0

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020