The Call Again Farm Journal

Oh, incubators!  Without them, there would be far fewer chickens in the world, and hardly any turkeys big enough for Thanksgiving.  They provide kids a view of the joyful miracle of hatching.  They can't don't get freaked out by human presence and abandon the eggs, like some broodies will.  They are also a pain in the neck.

I put the turkey eggs in the incubator last Thursday.  It is a two-year-old table-top circulated air machine, made of styrophome and sporting two little plastic windows to down at the eggs through.  Last year it was the good one, the reliable one.  This year, I can't seem to get the temperature right.  It was too hot in the incubator, so I kept turning the knob further and further clockwise, to get the temperature down.  It stayed as high as ever.  Finally, I got I lower, but it was way too low, an average temperature of ninety-eight degrees, when turkey eggs need a temperature a tiny bit over ninety-nine.  (Even a degree to cold or a degree to hot can seriously mess up incubation.)  So I turned the knob counterclockwise a tiny bit to increase the heat a bit, and the temperature's back at averaging one-hundred point five degrees.

Meanwhile, the newer incubator, the fancy one with the completely see-through plastic top and the automatically-setting temperature, the one that I called "the root of all evil" last year, is working great.  Last year, it was too hot, and my hatch rate for many batches of turkeys was below fifty percent.  In May, we figured out how to get the setting lower, but then the power cord kept coming unplugged from the incubator.  This year, we've found the correct angle to set the power cord at so it'll stay in, the temperature setting is right.  We'd plugged it in to get all these kinks worked out before we put any eggs in, and, with no eggs in it yet, it's averaging a perfect ninety-nine point five degrees.

Oh, when I speak of broody hens afraid of humans, I'm not just making them up.  Two years in a row, my tamest turkey hens have gone broody and hatched eggs.  Good experiences.  Now, though, my wildest turkey hen has gone broody, and there's no way I expect that I'll be able to transfer into the safe, controlled environment of a nest box.  If she were to hatch babies, they'd probably out of control, running all over the barn.  I'm afraid a lot of them would die, either by getting trapped somewhere and freezing away from their mother or getting caught by some predator.  It's a shame that I'm probably not going to be able to let her hatch eggs, because I need incubator space!

Well, my love/hate relationship with incubation, both natural and artificial, continues.  It may not always work out perfectly or at least easily, but I'll continue incubating eggs.  You'll be hearing about my trials and tribulations on this subject many, many more times if you continue reading my blog.