Choose a small incubator, check its thermometer, set the eggs, run the daily routine, manage lockdown and hatch day, then clean the machine for the next batch.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 13 min read
Most poor hatches in small incubators are decided before the first egg goes in. The display reads 37.5 degrees while the eggs sit at 38.6. The machine stands by a window that takes the afternoon sun. The eggs came forty kilometres on a motorbike and were set the minute they arrived. None of this shows until day 21, when a few weak chicks struggle out and the rest of the eggs stay shut. A small incubator will hatch well, but only if you test it, place it properly and then leave it alone to work.
Tabletop incubators holding from about a dozen to a few hundred eggs are widely sold. Ignore the claims on the box and look at six things.
Ask the seller whether spare parts such as the thermostat, fan and turning motor can be bought. Do not be impressed by a built-in humidity display. On cheap machines it is often the least accurate part.
A small incubator has a heater and no cooler. It can add heat to the air in the room but cannot remove it, and its thin walls lose heat quickly when the room is cold. So the room does half the work.
This is the step that separates good hatches from bad ones. The temperature shown on a low-cost incubator can be wrong by a degree or more, and the embryo reacts to errors much smaller than that. Half a degree too warm throughout brings chicks out early, small and with poorly healed navels. Half a degree too cool brings them out late, soft and weak. Larger errors kill.
Put a bottle cap of table salt, dampened with a few drops of water so it is wet but not dissolved, into a sealed clear plastic bag or container with the hygrometer. Leave it for eight to twelve hours at room temperature. The air above damp salt settles at 75 per cent relative humidity. If your meter shows 70, it reads five points low, and you correct every reading by that amount.
For chicken eggs in a forced-air machine, use 37.5 degrees Celsius throughout. In a still-air machine, aim for about 38.3 degrees measured level with the top of the eggs, because the centre of the egg sits in cooler air lower down. Keep relative humidity at roughly 45 to 55 per cent until day 18, then 65 to 75 per cent for the hatch.
Other species follow the same pattern with different lengths. In each case turning stops about three days before the hatch is due.
| Bird | Days to hatch | Stop turning on about |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 21 | Day 18 |
| Japanese quail | 17 to 18 | Day 14 or 15 |
| Guinea fowl | 26 to 28 | Day 23 to 25 |
| Turkey | 28 | Day 25 |
| Duck (common breeds) | 28 | Day 25 |
| Muscovy duck | About 35 | Day 31 or 32 |
Do not mix species with different hatch dates in one machine unless you have a second machine to hatch in. To see what the chicken embryo is doing on each day, use the 21-day incubator slider on our home page.
The incubator can only hatch what is alive in the egg. Start with clean, uncracked, normal-shaped eggs that are less than a week old and have been kept cool. How to choose and keep them is covered in our article on selecting and storing hatching eggs. If you buy fertile hatching eggs from Halaal Farms or any other supplier, agree the collection day so they reach you fresh, and carry them cushioned and shaded.
The temperature will fall when the eggs go in and may take several hours to climb back. Leave the setting alone. Turning the thermostat up at this point is how a lot of batches get cooked on the first night.
Incubation is three weeks of small, regular checks. Morning and evening are enough.
Humidity inside the incubator depends on the surface area of water, not its depth, and on the air outside. Along the coast and during the rains, the air in Ghana is already humid, and filling every water channel can leave the eggs too wet. During harmattan, especially in the north, the air is very dry and you may need every channel filled plus a wet sponge to add surface.
The eggs tell you whether you have it right. An egg should lose about 12 per cent of its weight between setting and day 18, within a range of roughly 11 to 13 per cent. Weigh the whole batch on a kitchen scale at setting and again on days 7, 14 and 18. As an example, 30 eggs weighing 1,800 grams at setting should weigh about 1,580 grams on day 18, a loss of around 12 grams a day. If they are losing too little, reduce the water surface or open the vent further. If they are losing too much, add water surface.
Candling gives the same information from the size of the air cell, which should fill about a third of the egg by day 18. Candle on about day 7 and day 14 to remove clear eggs and dead embryos, which can rot and burst. What to look for is shown in our guide to candling eggs.
On day 18 the chick is getting into position to hatch, with its head under its right wing and its beak pointing at the air cell. From now on the egg must stay still. Do everything in one opening of the lid.
Hands off during the hatch. Every time the lid is lifted, humidity collapses within seconds. The membranes of eggs that have already been pipped dry out and tighten around the chick, which then cannot turn to cut its way out. More chicks are lost to impatient owners at this stage than to any fault in the machine.
The first sign is a small star-shaped crack near the broad end, usually on day 20. This is the pip. You may hear cheeping from inside the shell. Then, for a long time, nothing seems to happen. The chick is resting, switching fully to breathing air and drawing in the last of its yolk. Twelve to 24 hours between pip and hatch is ordinary. Finally it cuts a line around the shell, pushes the cap off and lies exhausted and wet.
Leave newly hatched chicks in the incubator until they are dry and fluffy. They need no feed or water for a day because of the yolk they have just absorbed, and their movement and noise encourage the others. Remove dry chicks in one or two quick lots, not one at a time, to protect the eggs still hatching.
Have the brooder warm before the first pip, at about 32 to 35 degrees Celsius at chick level, with water and feed in place. Our chick brooding guide explains the set-up.
Timing is information. Chicks that hatch a day early point to a temperature that ran high. A hatch that drags into day 22 or 23 points to one that ran low, or to old eggs. Give unhatched eggs until the end of day 23, then stop. Open the leftovers outdoors and note what you find, since the stage at which embryos died tells you what to change. Our article on why eggs fail to hatch explains how to read them.
A used incubator is warm, damp and coated with down, shell, dried fluid and droppings, which is an ideal culture for bacteria and moulds. If it is not cleaned, the next batch starts its 21 days in that contamination, and the result is exploding eggs, sticky chicks and navel infections.
Write down four numbers for every batch: eggs set, clears removed at candling, chicks hatched and chicks alive at one week. They let you compare one hatch with the next and show whether your problem is the eggs or the machine. If eggs from your own birds are often clear, the cause lies with the cocks and hens, and our article on keeping a breeder flock deals with that.
Then work out what each chick cost. As an example, if you set 30 eggs bought at GH₵ 5 each, that is GH₵ 150. If 21 hatch, each chick has cost a little over GH₵ 7 in eggs alone, before electricity and your time. About half of them will be cockerels. Put your own prices into the same sum before deciding whether to hatch or to buy.
Home-hatched chicks are also unvaccinated. Marek's disease vaccine in particular has to be given at hatch by a hatchery, and protection against Newcastle and Gumboro must be arranged with a vet from the first days. For a few dozen local or dual-purpose birds, a small incubator is a sensible and satisfying tool, and it is the practical way to multiply guinea fowl, quail or your own best hens. For a commercial flock of layers or broilers, vaccinated day-old chicks are usually the safer start.
Halaal Farms supplies fertile hatching eggs as well as day-old chicks, guinea keets, turkey poults and quail chicks, with a minimum of one box of 50 for chicks. If you are weighing up which route suits you, call 024 915 1503 or send the order form, and we will talk it through with you before you pay for anything.
In a forced-air incubator, which has a fan, hold 37.5 degrees Celsius for the whole 21 days. In a still-air machine without a fan, aim for about 38.3 degrees measured level with the top of the eggs. Keep relative humidity around 45 to 55 per cent for the first 18 days and raise it to 65 to 75 per cent for the last three days while the chicks hatch.
It is better not to in a single machine. Eggs in their last three days need high humidity and no turning, while younger eggs need moderate humidity and regular turning, so one group always suffers. Hatching chicks also spread down and bacteria over the remaining eggs. If you want a hatch every week, use one machine for incubating and a second one only for hatching.
Usually not. A chick that has made the first hole often rests for 12 to 24 hours while it absorbs the last of its yolk and the blood vessels in the membrane close down. Opening the incubator dries the membranes onto other pipped chicks, and peeling shell early can cause bleeding. Keep the lid closed, check that humidity is high and give it time.
Not all of them. Some eggs are infertile and some embryos die for reasons you cannot control. A first attempt often gives 50 to 70 per cent of the eggs set. With fresh eggs from a healthy, well-mated flock and a checked, steady machine, 80 per cent or more is achievable. Keep a record of every hatch so that you can see whether changes you make improve the result.
Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.
A practical guide to candling chicken eggs with a torch: what a living embryo, a clear egg, a blood ring and a late death look like at each check, plus a record sheet that shows where your losses come from.
How to carry out a break-out on unhatched eggs, age the dead embryos by what you can see, and trace each pattern of loss back to the breeder flock, egg storage or the incubator settings.
A working guide to choosing eggs for the incubator by weight, shape, shell and cleanliness, and to storing them cool, humid and the right way up so they still hatch well after several days.
