How to incubate and hatch eggs

It's suddenly occurred to me that though I write about raising chicks all the time, I've never actually written about hatching them. I've been hatching steadily for about 8 years now and I've used everything from homemade incubators to cabinet incubators that hold almost 400 eggs. That's a lot of chicks! 

Since hatching season is rapidly approaching, I think now is the time to talk about incubating eggs and hatching chicks. First, decide if you should hatch chicks instead of buying them already hatched. Most people choose to incubate eggs that they purchased from a breeder to add a new breed to their flock. You can buy hatching eggs from a flock clear across the country and have them shipped to you. That's how I get most of my chickens, especially the fancy breeds. Others just like to expand their flock by hatching eggs from their own chickens.

Obviously the easiest way to hatch chicks would be to just let a broody handle the egg hatching. That way you don't have to worry about temperature, humidity and all that jazz. This is easiest if you want to hatch chicks from your own flock. If you don't have a broody though you'll need to use an incubator and that's where it gets a little more complicated.

First, you'll need to get an incubator. There are two types of incubators. Forced air and still air. Still air incubator means there is no artificial air flow inside the incubator. Forced air incubator means that the incubator has a fan inside it to circulate the air. It's important to know what kind of incubator you have because the temperature requirements are different for each one.

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How to incubate and hatch eggswas originally posted by Favorite Chicken Blogs