Title page - iĬertificate - iiĭedication - iiiĪcknowledgement - iv If you do not have the facilities to care for them, give them to a local hatchery, farm, Humane Society, feed or pet dealer. The incubator will come with complete hatching instructions and information on caring for your chicks when they hatch.DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF AN EGG INCUBATOR When the chicks begin to grow up and are too big to keep inside, please refer to your incubator instructions. When your chick gets too big for the house, DO NOT TURN THEM LOOSE. Always make sure that your chick has clean food and water. Place the two dishes in the corner of the box for your chicks. Fill a small dish of food also-use a starting mash from the feed store or you can buy a chick feeding starter kit complete with dishes and feed. When transferring chicks from the incubator to the brooder, handle very carefully - do not squeeze the chick! Avoid handling them much for the first few days.įill a small jar lid with fresh water, and add gravel or marbles to the water to keep the chick from drowning. After the first week you can raise the light to decrease the temperature by 5 degrees per week until the chicks have their feathers (usually 4 weeks for quail). Adjust the distance of the light or the wattage of the bulb until the temperature is right. If the chicks huddle together under the heat source, they might not be warm enough, and if they stay away from it, the box might be too hot.
Once all the chicks have hatched, you can use the thermometer from the incubator to monitor the temperature in the box. The rest of the box can be a little cooler. The temperature under the light should be about 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week. As soon as you can, though, switch to the incubator so the chicks are getting light as well as heat. (Make sure it doesn’t touch the box, to avoid a fire hazard.) Another option is to set the box on top of a heating pad. If a chick is getting active and you need to remove it from the incubator before the others are ready, hang a 40 or 60-watt light bulb over a corner of the box to provide light and heat. With the light turned toward the center of the box, push the rim of the bowl into the slit in the corner. When your chicks have hatched, empty the incubator bowl and turn it upside down. The paper towels give the chicks the traction they need to develop their legs.Ĭut a slit in the corner of the box, about four inches from the bottom and about eight inches along each side. Line the box with newspaper, hay, or aspen shavings (available at pet stores) and put paper towels over top for the first 5 days. You can use a clean cardboard box as your brooder box. Don’t try to feed it until it is completely dry and you have moved it from the incubator. The chick is very weak when it first hatches and will probably lie close to the egg for about eight hours before it starts to move around. First, don’t touch the incubator right away. It is important to follow the enclosed instructions carefully. If you are using our chick egg incubator ( BE-INCUBAT or LD-INCUBAT), you may wonder what to do when your chick hatches.
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