If you plan on breeding your own chickens, then you will almost certainly need an incubator for chicken eggs. It is the best way to increase the odds of fertilized eggs hatching. However, there are a lot of chicken egg incubators out there. That is why we have put together this list. We want to introduce you to what many satisfied customers claim are the 5 best egg incubators for hatching chicken eggs.
Do I Really Need an Incubator For Chicken Eggs?
Let’s start with one of the most frequently asked question by new chicken owners. So let’s see why you might need an incubator for chicken eggs.
If you want to increase your backyard chicken flock you have two options, hatching your own or buying new chicks every year. Now, trust me, the feeling of hatching your own is amazing and a rewarding educational experience.
For hatching your own eggs, you can use two approaches. The first one is to use a broody hen.
But the thing is that not every chicken breed tends towards broodiness. The hens of the Dorking chicken are broody, they have a huge desire to be mothers. On the other hand, the hens of the Hamburg chicken breed are always relying on others to do the mothering for them.
So, if your hens are not broody, this is where the chicken incubator comes in the picture. A good egg incubator for chicks improve the hatching success. It gives chicks a healthy start in life and helps break the natural disease cycle in your backyard flock.
5 Best Chicken Egg Incubators
Magicfly Digital Mini Fully Automatic Egg Incubator
Many of the chicken eggs incubators on the market are huge. They hold dozens and dozens of eggs. While this may be fine for some breeders, there are a lot of people that need something a bit smaller.
This Magicfly Mini may be just the ticket. It can hold around 9 eggs, although if you have a bantam breed, then it may be able to hold up to 12 eggs at the same time.
This is a fully-automatic chicken eggs incubator. This means that you don’t really have to do that much once the eggs have been placed inside. It will rotate the eggs automatically. It will control the temperature of the eggs automatically. All you really need to do is switch it on, and perhaps keep an eye on whether the eggs are about to hatch. The convenient LED panel on the top of the automatic egg incubator will allow you to keep tabs on what is going on inside.
HBLife Automatic Egg Incubator
For the most part, the HBLife Automatic Egg Incubator isn’t that much different from the previous egg incubator on this list. In fact, it is pretty much the same, albeit with an ever so slightly different look to it.
So, you can choose based upon the look that you enjoy the most, we suppose.
As with the previous egg incubator, you will need to purchase a hydrometer. They are fairly affordable. This is placed inside of the egg incubator so that you are able to monitor the humidity at all times. This is important if you want the embryos in the egg to fully develop into chickens that can hatch!
So, which one of the two egg incubators we have talked about so far should you get? They are both pretty much the same, right? Well, we suggest that you opt for the egg incubator that is the cheapest at the time. That is if you do not go for one of the other egg incubators on this list, that is.
Farm Innovators Egg Incubator
We are now starting to get into the incubators of chicken eggs that are going to be used for those slightly bigger hatching operations. This offering from Farm Innovators is able to keep 41 eggs at the right temperature. Of course, it is a fully automated egg incubator, so you just place the eggs inside, and the machine will do all of the hard work for you i.e. rotating the eggs.
Built into this egg incubator is an egg candler. This will allow you to see the progression of the eggs so that you know when they are ready to hatch. This is incredibly useful because, as you may well know, the closer the eggs come to hatching, the less they need to be rotated to the point where you just stop rotating them.
Despite the huge amount of sophisticated technology that has gone into creating this egg incubator, the price is affordable. Although, do bear in mind that if you are not planning on hatching this many eggs, you may not want to get it. It is going to be taking up a huge amount of space, after all.
Brinsea Products Mini Egg Incubator
And now we are back to the chicken egg incubators that are on the smaller side of things. In fact, this is the smallest egg incubator thus far. It is able to handle just 7 eggs.
It also holds the eggs in such a way that it is going to be taking up a lot less table space when you are using it.
So, the Brinsea Products Mini Egg Incubator may be the perfect option for those people that really are lacking in the space that they have to incubate some eggs. One of the features that we absolutely love about this egg incubator is the inclusion of a countdown timer on the top of the device.
This gives you a rough estimate of when the eggs are going to be ready to hatch. This means that you can check up on the eggs just before hatching day. Because of this indicator, this mini incubator knows exactly when it should stop rotating the eggs. This, of course, means that you are likely to end up with some chickens that hatch a little bit better. The digital display also provides a decent amount of control over the incubation process.
Brinsea Products 24 Egg Incubator
And now we will wrap up with another product from Brinsea Products. This one is capable of holding a whopping 24-eggs.
This product is a little bit different from the other chicken eggs incubators that we talked about, though. You see, this one is not an automatic egg incubator. Instead, you will have to rotate the eggs manually.
We know that there are some people that really do enjoy having a larger amount of control over the egg incubation process so, if you are into that sort of thing, then this incubator is probably going to be a good bet for you. The fact that it doesn’t have automatic rotation even helps to keep the price of the incubator a bit lower than other products that are of a similar size.
This egg incubator manages the water levels well, and it provides a stable temperature (with a small amount of adjustment). So, you are going to be getting a decent egg incubator here. We feel that this bit of kit is probably going to be best for those that are running a medium-sized chicken breeding operation and need something to make incubation easy without taking away huge amounts of control.
