So, you've decided you want to hatch chicks. Excellent. You're about to spend roughly three weeks staring at eggs, questioning every fluctuation on the incubator display, shining flashlights through shells, and convincing yourself that the egg you just saw move definitely moved and you aren't losing your mind.

Hatching chicks is one of my favorite parts of raising chickens. Watching one hatch never really gets old, no matter how many times I've done it. But before you start loading eggs into an incubator or tucking them underneath a broody hen, we need to have a little chat. Setting the eggs is the easy part. What are you going to do if they actually hatch?

Do You Actually Have Room for the Chickens You're About to Hatch?

I don't mean, “Do you have room for twelve adorable little chicks?” They're tiny. Of course you have room for twelve adorable little chicks. I'm asking whether you have room for twelve more chickens.

Those little fluff balls are going to turn into juveniles astonishingly fast. They're going to need more brooder space, then someplace safe to live while they're growing out, and eventually enough permanent coop and run space if you're keeping them. Before I set eggs, I want to know where those birds are going at every stage, because “I'll figure it out later” works beautifully right up until later arrives.

What Are You Going to Do With the Roosters?

This is the conversation people really don't want to have before they hatch. You aren't ordering a carton of hens. The sex of each chick was determined at fertilization, and unless you're hatching an autosexing breed or a specifically designed sex-linked cross, you generally aren't going to know which chicks are male when they pop out of those eggs.

That means you need a rooster plan before you hatch. Maybe you can keep multiple roosters. Maybe you have room for a bachelor flock. Maybe you have legitimate homes lined up. Maybe processing excess males is part of how you manage your flock. What I don't recommend is assuming you'll just find wonderful homes for every extra cockerel when the time comes.

I love my boys, but roosters are not exactly a scarce commodity. There are only so many homes looking for another one. If you aren't willing or able to deal with the males that may hatch, don't set the eggs until you know what you're going to do. Hope is not a strategy.

Are You Prepared for Eggs That Don't Hatch?

This part sucks, but it belongs in the conversation. Not every fertile egg becomes a chick. Some eggs won't develop. Some embryos will begin developing and quit. Some can make it surprisingly far into incubation and still never hatch. Occasionally, you'll end up with a chick that hatches with serious problems.

You can do everything correctly and still lose one. That's biology. It isn't always something you did wrong, and there isn't always something you could have done to change the outcome. Hatching is incredible when everything goes right. It's considerably less magical when you've spent three weeks watching an egg develop only to realize that chick isn't coming out. If you're going to hatch, you need to be prepared for both.

Incubator or Broody Hen?

You don't necessarily need an incubator to hatch chicks. A good broody hen is perfectly capable of doing the job herself, and sometimes she'll make all our thermometers, hygrometers, charts, and carefully researched incubation plans look a little ridiculous. Agnes has certainly made that point around here.

An incubator gives you control over temperature, humidity, ventilation, and turning. A broody hen manages the eggs herself. Neither method guarantees a successful hatch, and using an incubator doesn't automatically mean you'll get a better hatch rate. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, so the important part is understanding the method you're using rather than assuming one is inherently better because it has more buttons.

Can You Leave the Damn Incubator Alone?

If you're using an incubator, you're going to want to mess with it. You're going to check the display, decide something looks wrong, adjust something, stare at it some more, and wonder whether you should adjust it again.

Resist the urge.

Opening an incubator for five seconds on day eight isn't going to instantly doom every embryo inside. The point is that successful incubation depends on maintaining an appropriate environment, and constantly opening the lid, adjusting settings, moving eggs around, and reacting to every tiny fluctuation isn't helping. Follow the instructions for your incubator, use reliable instruments, and give the machine time to stabilize before deciding something needs adjusting.

This becomes especially important once hatch begins. After eggs have externally pipped, unnecessarily opening the incubator can cause humidity to drop quickly. If you don't have a reason to be in there, leave it alone. You may, however, press your face against the viewing window and stare at the eggs like a lunatic. That's practically mandatory.

Are You Prepared for Hatch Day to Take FOREVER?

You see the first little crack and think, THIS IS IT. You pull up a chair, stare at the egg and wait for your chick to make her grand entrance.

Then the chick apparently decides to take a lunch break.

Hatching isn't a race. There can be a long stretch between the first external pip and the chick actually coming out of the shell, and during that time the chick still has work happening inside the egg. This is where new hatchers can get themselves into trouble by deciding a chick needs help simply because it isn't hatching fast enough for us.

Do not use the clock alone to decide when to assist a hatch. Assisting too early can cause serious bleeding and kill a chick that wasn't actually in trouble. If you think a chick genuinely needs assistance, that's a separate decision that requires understanding what you're looking at and what's happening inside the egg. Sometimes the hardest thing you can do on hatch day is sit on your damn hands and wait.

Is Your Brooder Ready?

And by ready, I don't mean you own a plastic tote somewhere in the garage.

Before those chicks hatch, you should know what you're using for a brooder, how you're going to heat it, what bedding you're using, where the feeder and waterer will go, and where the brooder itself is going to live. Your chicks need appropriate chick starter, clean water, safe bedding, a reliable heat source, and enough room to move comfortably between warmer and cooler areas.

You also need to think beyond that first adorable week. Chicks grow ridiculously fast. The brooder that looks enormous when six tiny fluff balls are standing in it can become a cramped disaster before you're emotionally prepared for how much they've grown. Have the next setup figured out before everybody starts flying out of the first one and shitting on things you didn't intend chickens to shit on.

What's Your Plan If the Power Goes Out?

If you're using an incubator, electricity suddenly becomes a much bigger deal than it was yesterday. What happens if the power goes out for an hour? Several hours? Overnight?

Your backup plan needs to make sense for your actual equipment and situation. That might mean a generator, a battery backup capable of safely running your incubator, or another reliable emergency power source. Figure it out before there's a storm outside and you're standing in the dark with a flashlight, an incubator full of developing eggs, and absolutely no fucking idea what you're going to do.

You may never need the backup plan. That's kind of the goal.

Are You Prepared to Make a Hard Decision?

This is probably the least fun part of the article, but if we're doing a reality check, I'm not skipping it. Occasionally a chick hatches with a serious deformity, injury, or condition that isn't compatible with a reasonable quality of life. Sometimes a chick declines despite everything you do.

There may come a point when keeping a chick alive isn't the kindest choice. Nobody gets excited about that part of raising animals, but if you're intentionally creating new life, you're also accepting responsibility for what happens when something goes wrong.

Know ahead of time where you can get knowledgeable veterinary help, learn what normal newly hatched chicks should look and act like, and be prepared for the possibility that someday the humane decision may also be the one you really don't want to make. That's part of hatching too.

And Then There's Chicken Math

Let's say you've thought through all of this. You have room, you have a rooster plan, the brooder is ready, and you've accepted that hatching doesn't always go perfectly.

Excellent. Now I'd like to introduce the final threat: yourself.

You start with six eggs. Then there's room in the incubator for a few more, and leaving those spaces empty seems wasteful. Then somebody has eggs from a breed you've wanted forever. Then one of your hens goes broody, and obviously those don't count because she's hatching them.

Suddenly you have 27 chicks, two brooders, another grow-out pen, and you're standing in the lumber aisle doing coop math. Set a limit based on the number of adult chickens you can realistically house and care for, not the number of eggs that fit in your incubator.

I realize the hypocrisy involved in chicken people giving other chicken people this advice. I'm giving it anyway.

So... Should You Hatch Chicks?

If you've gotten this far and you're still thinking, HELL YES, then you may actually be ready. Hatching is messy, unpredictable, and sometimes heartbreaking. It requires patience that I do not naturally possess, and there will absolutely be moments when you question whether an egg moved or whether you've simply been staring at it too long.

And then a chick starts zipping. The shell opens, this wet, exhausted, ridiculous little creature tumbles out, and within hours it's transformed into a fluffy baby chicken stumbling around the incubator like it owns the place. That part never gets old.

Just don't let the magic of hatch day distract you from everything that comes after it. The goal isn't simply to hatch chicks. The goal is to be prepared to raise the chickens that come out of those eggs.

Still want to do it? Good. Now that I've tried to talk some sense into you and you're apparently going to hatch them anyway, you can check out our available hatching eggs and get yourself into trouble.

 

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Tiny tap inside
I swear that egg moved again
Do not touch the egg