Buy White Heckle Eggs for Sale – High-Quality & Fresh

Firstly, you’ll need an incubator to keep the fertile eggs at a constant 37.5°C for 21 days until the eggs hatch. This is often where the biggest mistake is made. You can find incubators online for as little as £20 including delivery, which sounds great, but many of these do not keep a constant temperature, and some are fire hazards. You’re likely to waste all the money spent on the incubator and eggs, and have disappointed children. It is worth investing in a reliable incubator, such as the Brinsea range which starts at around £85.

Where you place the incubator in your home is important. It should not be in direct sunlight, near a radiator or in a draft. The room should be kept at a pleasant temperature and should not fluctuate between day and night. Any one of these factors can prevent incubators from keeping the constant temperature that eggs require.

Test your incubator is working correctly. Place a medical thermometer where the eggs will be placed and check that it is the same as the reading on the display. If not, adjust the thermostat so that the medical thermometer inside the incubator reads 37.5°C. An incorrect display reading is a frequent problem encountered by novice hatchers.

Once you’re happy with your set up, you’ll need to source some fertile eggs. Durham Hens is the largest supplier of mail-order fertile eggs in the UK, sending out hundreds per day at peak times. The eggs are posted in cardboard boxes, with purpose-made soft foam inserts which cushion and protect the eggs from damage. We constantly check the fertility of our breeding stock by candling their eggs in our hatchery, and only send out eggs that we know have a good chance of developing into chicks.

When your eggs arrive in the post, leave them to settle overnight with the pointed end down before putting them in the incubator. If you collect your eggs, they can be placed in the incubator straight away.

It is important that the eggs are set lying on their side or with the pointed end downwards, because the air sac in the egg is at the wider end.

Follow the instructions for your incubator during the incubation period. Please note that eggs set in the upright position should be laid on their sides a few days before hatching.

Also increase the humidity in the incubator for the last 3 days.

Automatic incubators turn the eggs about once an hour. If you have a manual incubator, you need to turn the eggs as often as you can. The eggs will not develop properly if they are not turned regularly.

Do not open the incubator except to add water. Both the temperature and humidity will fall every time it is opened and this can slow the incubation period causing the eggs to hatch later than expected.

Chicks should be kept in the incubator until they are dry and fluffy. They can be left in the incubator for up to 24 hours as they don’t need food or water during that time.

Please note that using large incubators designed up to hatch well when full of eggs often perform poorly when only a small number of eggs are set. Incubating hen and bantam eggs with pheasant eggs will often give poor results, possibly because the incubation temperature for pheasants is lower than for chickens and the incubation period longer.