Incubators for Hatching Eggs 18 Chicken Egg Incubators with Automatic Egg Turning and Humidity Control - Chicken Incubators, Temperature & Humidity Display, for Chicken, Hatch Quail, Duck and Goose

We have had multiple different types of incubators, for chickens, quails, guineas and even turkeys and this one is, by far, our favorite for our small batch hatching of our chickens. The auto turn is incredible, always spot on for timing, the humidity control is a little tricky to get the hang of so I would make sure you practice with it prior to putting eggs in and the candling light is really good! Its very easy to use as long as you follow the instructions, about average on asking price, the trays can adjust for different egg sizes and seems to be well made for what you are getting. I definitely think this is a great choice for anyone looking to hatch their own eggs, regardless if its chickens or quails. Highly recommend.

When I got pullets or chicks in the past, I paid the mark-up price at our local farm and feed store. It really adds up, and the birds available there are limited to certain breeds, and to whatever is left that someone else didn't snatch up before I got there. That meant that I could only get a couple of layers that produced blue/green (and only what they call the Ameracauna, not "undiluted" Aracauna) or chocolate brown speckled (only Copper Marans) in early spring. Adding more chicks or pullets later, if a new delivery came, was always a fiasco involving anti-pecking products and a largely less-healthy younger group of hens due to the obvious problems inherent to the pecking order and the fear factor for the smaller birds. Isolating the flocks wasn't possible for me at our old place, as there wasn't enough land to allow two houses to fully free-range, uncontainer, without contact. This will be my first time hatching a whole new flock of chicks, and I'm really excited for every bit of it except for a couple of the steps after identifying roos and before preparing to can up some chicken meat. Honestly, I might hire that out to spare myself the recurring intrusive visuals. Back to the point, though, I'll be able to order all the eggs needed to fill this incubator from one supplier, receive the exact breed or breeds I want on the exact early spring day I choose in one order, and I'll be off to a great start with plenty for the first year to work out and streamline the care, feeding, egg gathering, and then the safe overwintering of the birds in a place that, unlike my old place, had several feet of snow dump on it in half as many days, and stays tail-feather-biting cold for, roughly, too many months. I'm looking forward to getting only the two breeds: Marans (unsure which, yet) and (real) Aracauna (true to the breed originating in Mexico). Maybe I'll just get one breed. I really love the Marans eggs most. The yolks were always more firm, orange, and eggy tasting in a good way. I love that this incubator takes care of the rotating, the temperature, and has a candling light right on it, so even that little important detail just became one less thing to devise and get set up without it being another thing. Anyone new to chickens? Learn from my mistake here: Don't go thinking you can keep your chicks in your house while you show the kids how to build a mobile chicken tractor with all kinds of nifty added features. Kids have busy school and after school activity and private lesson schedules, unreasonably behemoth mountains and daily hours of homework, friends, holidays, parties, and somewhere in there they need to be fed with healthy home-grown food and get lots of love and some guaranteed actual time off to just be. Chicks are adorable, but they grow VERY fast. So does their poop. And the bigger their poop gets, the uglier the birds get as their down goes away and gets haphazardly replaced with random, weird-looking feathers. In a few very short weeks, those 16 tiny fluffy darlings that made the kids all squeel softly with delight as you took pictures of them holding them against their faces...? Yeah, those are just gone. They are now 16 ugly, stenching, loud, obnoxious, messy, violent mini T-Rex descendents that keep everyone awake half the night and you're afraid to put them outside because it's still too cold, there are predators, and you haven't finished that fancy structure you've been adding more and more ideas to your quite-nicely-drawn plans for since last November. In short, build the coop before you get the eggs, chicks, or pullets. Get the incubator, the automatic waterer, the feed and automatic feeder, the oyster shell, the electrolytes, wormer, straw, wood chips, automatic solar powered chicken coop door and the fans to make the air in there slightly less unbreathable, the red heat lamp, and get absolutely everything you think you need, because there will be more, but don't get the meal worms until your chicks can eat them and don't start to count your eggs until you know, at least roughly, how many half gallon jars of coque au vin (etc.) you'll be putting up on your pantry shelves. I know I said that I wasn't looking forward to the task of dispatching roos, but now that I think on it, I won't find it so hard to do when it's the only way to shut them up, will I? Enjoy the process by being prepared for it. Enjoy the learning, the eggs, candling, hatching, fluffy cuteness, and the coos of delight from your family, but have that heat lamp and coop ready. Aww... they're so cute...when they're little. So, you see, that's the stage I missed before. I went straight to "fast growing chick" and never got the joy of fussing over eggs and seeing them struggle out of their shells all skinny and stringy-wet-down-clad. I may even carefully and painstakingly sew a whole flock of teensy weensy plaid bow ties and matching vests for them, because I'm old, and the kids are all grown up and have long since gone their own ways to soak up higher and ever higher education, and built lives of their own, and because winter is very long here in this new place. Don't put off making these kinds of memories. I just wish I'd started that first year off with eggs in the incubator, and with the coop already built. Blessings on your journey. How many "stars" do I give to something capable of producing happy memories that last a lifetime? They only allow me five stars. So, I guess it's only five stars, but really, from where I am, looking back on all the fun that, if you're a young family, is still a promise, still in front of you, I think it deserves a whole lot more.

This is a nice incubator I hatched both chicken chicks (8) and Quail chicks (6) in this incubator. This does have an automatic humidity control however I was not able to use this feature as the humidity was too high. I ran the incubator a few days and added water until I was able to get the humidity where I needed it. But using the 1 bottle made the humidity too high for the first 18 days. The automatic turner worked great turning off 3 days before the end of hatch so I did not have to worry about the chicks when they came out. I did a hatching video but I was unable to get it to upload. Overall this was a easy incubator to use and I am happy with it.

This incubator works great! It will hatch up to 18 eggs and turn them and keeps the humidity perfect. I used it for my summer chicks and worked great each time. I did use it for less eggs because I just didn't want 18 chicks running around lol. But I believe it would do 18 if I wanted it to but also liked the roominess in it for not doing all at one time. Built sturdy and ease of use and directions it came with made it very easy to operate.

So my wife and I have been on a bit of an urban homesteading journey. We have been growing an ever increasingly larger garden for the past 15 years and we are at a point where we can grow more veggies and fruits, or we can add livestock. We chose to start raising Quail. They are quiet and the city I live in doesn't have a Quail Ordinance, and Bob White Quail are native to the state I live in so by raising those, we are not affecting our local ecosystem adversly. We got this as our first incubator as we start gathering all of the supplies needed to make this venture possible in the early spring. When I got this, I opened the box and was pleasantly impressed. At first, I thought it had Playskool coloring on it. You could almost mistake this for a giant kids toy at a glance. After closer inspection, I found it felt like it had a quality build to it. The clear plastic dome is thick enough to be sturdy but not so thick that it is heavy. There are different trays for different size eggs, and this will turn your eggs for you. I also like that all I really have to do is keep an eye on the temps and humidity, don't let the water bottles go dry, and I should be good to go. The candling light on the top works well and the tray spins at a snail's pace, which is what you want. The one issue I have so far is the cord length. It could be another 3-4 feet longer to make placement a little easier.