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Why Not Hatch in the Brooder?

 
gardener
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First time quail hatching. I figure chickens are about the same and there's no quail forum. I am learning a lot about it. What doesn't make sense to me is hatching in the incubator because:

1. You have only 24 hours from the first chick to the last chick to hatch before you have to decide whether the unhatched chicks should die or the first hatch should. Though, actual hatching can span 4 days.

2. You have to do a bunch of changes to an automatic incubator to get it to not turn your eggs and get the humidity to rise, which means exposing your eggs to a fair amount of draft 3 days prior to hatching.

3. You have to adjust your newborns to a new environment just after they hatch, which seems a little odd given they were probably just learning about the one they were just in.

Does anyone have insight into this?

Thanks!
 
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I've hatched hundreds of quail and almost all that will hatch are out in 24 hours or less.  I've pulled them out after 24 hours and put them in the brooder while the rest were in the incubator.  I had a few hatch later, but less than a dozen, all told, so I don't think it's much of an issue if you batch incubate.  This seems like a good reason to have a separate brooder, so you can put the hatched ones in the brooder while still incubating.  I also think they'd be fine for 36-48 hours in the incubator, though I wouldn't leave them that long, personally.

If your incubator doesn't make it easy, you need a different incubator.  I just built mine, so it's not complicated at all.

The brooder environment should be very, very similar to the incubator: no drafts, proper temp, decent humidity.  I've never had an issue with this.  I've only ever lost 2 or 3 quail from all my hatchings combined, but I don't help them unless they missed a pip in the egg so it won't open and then I just cut the shell to allow the chick to open it.

Now that I've got electricity I'm going to break out the incubator.  I am actually thinking of building a much larger one but only so I can hatch out many more eggs of different species.

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