The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.99: Incubating your own eggs

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

My guest today, Pascale Deffieux Pearce, is a vice-president with Brinsea, a producer of egg incubators for the farm and home. She joins me to talk about ins and outs and pros and cons of hatching your own eggs, or those of your hens'. 

It's The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca or email me, editor at theruminant.ca. I'm on Twitter at Ruminant Blog and you can find me on Facebook. Alright, let's do a show. All right, let's do a show. Hey folks, it's Jordan. And this is my guest on the show today. Hello, my name is Pascal Pierce, and I'm the executive vice president of Brinzi Products, the incubation specialist.

Brinzi started in the UK over 40 years ago, and we've been proudly distributing, manufacturing and distributing our products all over the world and in the US for over 20 years now. So we're going to talk about incubation on the farm or in your home. In the interest of transparency, I want to say that I was approached by Benzi and they expressed an interest in coming on to talk about hatching your own eggs. And since I hadn't covered it on the show, I thought it was a good idea. This is not a paid spot. They just knew that they'd be able to promote their products a bit by coming on to talk about this. And I was happy to talk to Pascal. So that's in a minute. And just before we get to that, I want to acknowledge a couple donors from the last week. Stephen M. in British Columbia, my neighbor just up valley. Steve, thanks a lot for your donation.

And another one from Bill P. Bill, that's number two, and I really appreciate it. So thanks for listening. Thanks for your support. Everyone else, if you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider making a donation and you can learn more about that at theruminant.ca slash gift registry. All right, here is my conversation with Pascal from Brinsey. I will talk to you briefly at the end of the episode. Oh, and look, there were a few episodes I recorded early on this year where there was a little bit of annoying, almost imperceptible, but kind of noticeable feedback. And this is one of those conversations. I hope you won't really notice it. You probably will now that I mentioned it. Anyway, I'm sorry about this. Pascal, thanks a lot for joining me on the Room In It podcast.

My pleasure. You've agreed to come on to talk about incubators, about hatching your own eggs. And so we're thinking about the people either at home or on small farms or medium-sized farms or even larger that are considering making the switch from what they've been doing, which presumably is purchasing chicks from a hatchery and having them shipped to hatching their own eggs. So I'd like to start with asking you to tell me some of the benefits of doing the hatching yourself versus buying from a hatchery. Well, I think maybe I should start with the one disadvantage and then move on to the advantages. The one disadvantage being that when you order from a hatchery, you can have the choice of ordering hens or pullet roosters. When you hatch your own eggs, you don't have the choice of the sex of the eggs.

That's going to be, you know, a surprise. And usually it turns out to be about 50-50. But, you know, sometimes it's one way than the other. So that's the one disadvantage. For most, you know, small-scale breeders, it doesn't matter very much. But, you know, obviously, you know, it may obviously it may in some circumstances, and there's no way around it. But one of the advantages is clearly that if you have your own birds, and especially for some of the rarer breeds, the heritage breeds, where, you know, the availability is limited. Having your own stock and expanding on that stock is a definite advantage.

So, okay, yeah, that makes total sense, Pascal, that especially if you're interested in the harder-to-get breeds, once you have some stock, then you can continue the line by hatching your own eggs. Are there any motivations, typically, that your customers have in making the switch to incubators? I think it's, you know, once you have an established flock, you eliminate the lower hatchability rates. Whenever you ship eggs, you know, from a hatchery, you're going to have, I mean, they get jostled in transit. You don't know what sort of temperatures they get subjected to. they get subjected to. And so obviously the hatch rates that you normally get from externally sourced eggs are lower than when you're collecting your own eggs and setting them. So that's one of the main advantages as well of hatching your own.

What about, is there any advantage in terms of price? I mean, do you have any sense of comparing the price of buying chicks versus either ordering eggs to be sent to you or hatching them from your own stock of eggs? Is there a price savings in either case?

Well, it's hard to judge. Again, you fall into the, it's not cut and dried. You know, when you're going to get into the situation where, you know, if you clearly, you know, don't want any roosters, you know, there's some city ordinances that, you know, that allow, you know, backyard chickens, but, you know, obviously no roosters because of the crowing. but obviously no roosters because of the crowing. Then obviously ordering from a hatchery where the day-old chicks will guarantee that you're getting the hens and not the roosters.

So it really depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to set up a flock from which you can breed, then probably, you know, hatching your own would be a good start. Also, Pascal, I guess, I mean, I assume, I haven't done this myself, but I just assume that hatching your own eggs is like really fun. It must be, I mean, I guess if you're a commercial grower, you know, it'll wear off after a time, but it must just be really fun to take eggs through that process

and watch them hatching and candling them and that sort of stuff. It certainly is. It certainly is, and it seems to be addictive. So that's a word of caution. Yes, certainly, you know, if you're doing it on a very large scale, it's a different approach. But still, I mean, you know, we certainly but still I mean you know we certainly incubate eggs you know every season here and I don't tire of

you know watching them hatch and candling them and watching these embryos develop and you know the movement etc I just still find it you know fascinating after you know 30 years so particularly years. Particularly if you have children, I think it's a fabulous experience. Right. Okay. And so moving on, Pascal, I know that your company has put out some documents to help to guide people through the process of hatching their own. And I kind of want to touch on some of the how-to. And I'm just wondering if you could give us a relatively brief review of the critical points to success when hatching your own eggs.

Yeah, sure. I mean, on our website, as I say, we have a free incubation handbook for download. It's a nice PDF document that you can download and print, and it covers all the aspects of you know of incubation and troubleshooting etc but i mean basically um there are four four key uh parameters for you know for for hatching a bird egg and one is the temperature i mean that's absolutely crucial the temperature should be you know nice and and constant and usually for, you know, most breeds 99.5. So that's the first parameter. The second is turning, you know, bird eggs need

to be turned. Reptile eggs don't, but bird eggs need to be turned, you know, relatively frequently. Most incubators will turn the eggs on an hourly basis. If you have to do it manually three to four times a day or more if you can, it works. But obviously, the more the better. So temperature, turning. And I'll stop you there, Pascal. For dummies like me, can you quickly explain why the turning is so important to the hatching process? why the turning is so important to the hatching process? Sure, yes.

I mean, the shell of an egg is porous and the embryo breathes. And also, whenever the embryo, which sits on top of the yolk, whenever the egg is turned, the embryo basically gets rotated into the albumin, into the white of the egg, and that's where some of the nutrients are. And so you've got a food exchange, if you want, happening, and also a gas exchange. So if you don't turn the eggs at all, they would basically die. I mean, the developing embryo would get stuck to the membranes inside the shell, and all this sort of nutritious aspect and the breathing aspect would not take place, and it wouldn't develop past a few days.

would not take place and it wouldn't develop past, you know, a few days. So I'm taking us on an unnecessary tangent, but it makes sense to me that just in the act of sitting, a hen would jostle the eggs, but do we know whether hens are actively turning their eggs in a similar way? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, yes. Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, they will, you know, stand off the eggs, and with their beak, they will, you know,

basically jostle the eggs on a periodic basis. It's not... Some birds turn their eggs a lot more often. Certain breeds of exotic birds turn their eggs, you know, probably every 10 minutes or even every 5 minutes they've been observed for some of the parrot breeds. But, you know, typically a chicken will, you know, probably every 10 minutes or even every five minutes there's been observed for some of the parrot breeds. But, you know, typically a chicken will, you know, will stand up and, you know, move her eggs with her beak and, you know, sit back down on them, you know, several times a day. And she'll also, you know, go away and forage and, you know, and come back, not for very, very long, but, you know, she'll get off but she'll get off the nest and come back and sit down on the eggs. And that's not detrimental.

I mean, a lot of people, when they start incubating, are very concerned about opening an incubator to add water or to candle the eggs, which is basically observing, you know, the embryo development. And that they really should not because, you know, for the very short period that they open the incubator, the eggs will not cool enough to cause any damage to, you know, to the development of the embryo. It's actually been found that cooling is beneficial. the embryo it's actually been found that that cooling is is beneficial oh it's just like being a first-time parent you just get super paranoid about every possible thing you can do okay so you you talked about temperature and turning and you said there were two more elements that are really important what are they that's right and they're kind of associated and that's um that's humidity and ventilation. And they usually go in hand

because you have to achieve the right amount of humidity. You have usually water reservoirs in the incubator and ventilation holds or slides, you know, so you can adjust. So basically the more fresh air goes into the incubator, the lower the humidity rate is going to be, and conversely. So that's, you know, that's the way you control humidity is how much water is in the incubator and how much fresh air comes into the incubator. I mean, bearing in mind that, you know, eggs do lose water. Basically, water evaporates from the egg.

They lose about 13% of their original weight from, you know, over the 21 days of incubation. So they contribute to the humidity levels in an incubator as well. Right. Okay. So look, I want to kind of turn to asking about some specific questions about some of the technology. This will apply for the consideration of the home gardener and also getting towards a larger scale.

Sure. But it is also i'm just going to give you a chance maybe to start by um probably boasting about your product um so but anyway what i want to start by asking is like to what extent uh are are these incubators and i guess specifically the brinsey ones um automated because you just went over these critical points, right? So maybe you could take me through those four points again and talk about how your incubators manage those elements of temperature, humidity, airflow, and turning. Sure, sure. Well, we have basically, you know, sort of four sort of ranges of products. We start with our arm, and for each size, I should point out,

we have three levels of sophistication. So obviously, they all control temperature. Most of them turn the eggs automatically. We have only a couple of models which do not, which are also used as hatches separate hatches and uh you know the the top of the range controls absolutely everything hey folks this is jordan cutting in during the editing of the episode so i asked pascal my guest to describe the products that brinzia offers as far as egg incubators goes.

And she did exactly what I asked her to do. And she was very passionate about it. And it was kind of a five minute description that begins to make the episode feel like too much of an infomercial. So for Pascal's sake, who agreed to come on the show and talk about incubators, I'm going to remind you to go to Brinzia.com if you want to learn about all the great characteristics of these brinzia incubators. But I'm now going to cut back in toward the end of her description and we'll continue with the rest of our conversation. And so that's, you know,

that covers it. Pretty much they have temperature alarms. So if the temperature of the incubator deviates from the program temperature, it would alarm and let you know. We have also some unique features as far as alarms, which is a room temperature. The incubator detects if the ambient temperature is deviating from ideal. So before the incubator faults and overheats or cannot cope with the cold temperature in the room and will not be able to maintain the 99.5,

the incubator will alarm and warn that the room is either too cold or too hot for the machine to maintain the set temperature. And that's a pretty unique feature of our incubators. And that feature is available on all the sizes, you know, on all the different models in in our range so so i mean with with the higher end models in your range one could if they trusted that their furnace wasn't going to break down they could set this thing up go on vacation for 17 18 days get back in time to change the humidity and a few days later they have chicks it sounds like well yes you'd miss out on a lot of the excitement because as far as I'm concerned, you know, sort of candling the eggs and, you know, sort of, you know, observing the embryo development is really part of the fun.

But yes, in theory, you could. Okay, so I just wanted to ask, you talked about the kind of the entry-level ones in terms of the number of eggs. How big can your incubators get? Can you take me to the other end really quickly? What are your largest incubators? Sure. Our cabinet incubators, we have four models in that range. And the largest one is our over-easy 580 and will hold 576 chicken eggs.

So that's getting pretty much the serious small scale breeder. Right, right. Okay, well, I've just got a few more technical questions for you, Pascal. I guess the first one is, let's see well where where does the hatching take place uh do you recommend like does it happen in the incubator or are you transferring them um on day 19 or 20 or 21 or whatever it is well really it really depends i mean if you're looking at the very small incubators uh you know the hatching will normally take place inside the incubator so the turning gets stopped Some of our models stop the turning automatically for you,

you know, two days prior to hatching, so you don't have to worry about it. The larger ones, you know, 28 eggs or 56 eggs or even the larger ones, you would have to do that for yourself. So you would stop the turning, add more water. Usually there's a couple of reservoirs. So during incubation, you've had one reservoir filled.

So at hatching, you'd fill the second reservoir if you're controlling humidity manually, that is. Otherwise, you know, you just adjust the humidity setting on the controls and we'll do it for you. And you would, you know, reduce the temptation from now on to, you know, to open the incubator because you want to retain that high humidity level. Otherwise, the membranes, you know,

dry out and then makes it harder for the chicks to, you know, to come out. But so that's one aspect. A lot of people, if they have enough throughput, like to transfer the eggs at day 19 and hatch in a separate hatcher. That has the advantage that the mass of hatching is contained in a separate unit. So they can set eggs in the incubator straight away. They don't have to mess with altering the humidity levels, etc. in the incubator.

And then obviously they have a separate hatcher which I would say could be another incubator for the smaller units, one that doesn't have any turning, and they have it, you know, set a different humidity level and, as I say, have the mess contained in that unit. So, it really depends. I mean, on the large scale, you know, our 580, our River Easy 580 is purely an incubator. It's designed to work with a separate hatcher. So there's a continual throughput usually in the incubator.

People looking at those sorts of capacities set eggs pretty much on a weekly basis and rotate them on the different levels of the incubator and move them out to a hatcher at day 19. Right. Okay. And how about sanitizing the unit in between? Is that a difficult process? I assume it's pretty important. It is important. I mean, our incubators are made of impervious plastics, and we actually have in the plastics, the cabinets of our incubators, we have antimicrobial agents added at the time of the molding to try and reduce the bacterial growth that's inevitably associated with, you know, a warm, moist environment. So, I mean, we sell, you know, incubation disinfectant that works safe on the eggs. And so, obviously, it's very safe to use in the incubators, will not off-gas it, etc.

But, you know, a diluted solution of bleach is certainly perfectly fine, so long as it's rinsed off well and making sure that the incubator is thoroughly dry before setting, you know, another batch of eggs. Obviously the electronic parts, you know, can be, well, I mean, all the mechanical parts like the fan, you know, fan guards, et cetera, heater cords, et cetera, can be, you know, dusted off with a soft brush or, you know, that's obviously they cannot be immersed. But, you know, the trays, the bases, et cetera, can, you know, are certainly safe.

Although they're not safe to be put in a dishwasher, but they certainly can be, you know, disinfected and scrubbed thoroughly. Right. Okay. And this next question is more with the commercial poultry woman in mind. Parts and service. I mean, stuff's going to break from time to time. How easy is it for that commercial farmer who really needs something quick to get their, what I assume is a pricey piece of equipment fixed? Yes, I mean, that larger incubator retails a couple of thousand dollars. So, yes. I mean, there are basically, I mean, that larger incubator retails at a couple of thousand dollars.

So, yes. I mean, there are basically, you know, there's two modules that are readily available. You know, there's a turning assembly and there's a control assembly. And basically, two sort of a couple of boxes that we can certainly send. And the unit doesn't have to come back to us. Obviously, they're quite large and bulky, and that wouldn't make sense. So we can certainly expedite these replacement parts, and they're very easy to, you know, they're sort of plug-in components.

So they can be quickly changed, and so you don't lose too much, hopefully too much productivity, or a batch of eggs. I mean, we offer a three-year warranty on all our incubators, and so you stand by them whenever anything goes wrong. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, we're getting towards the end here, Pascal. I wanted to ask, really, I should say,

a lot of these questions are coming from a friend of mine who has considered getting a hatchery for his operation. So he was also interested in knowing if you happen to have data on comparing hatchery tricks to on-farm chicks in terms of what's more efficient to do or success rates or health, just any metrics like that. Have you looked at any, I don't know, any research on that stuff? Sure, yeah. Well, there is data available, of course. available, of course.

If, you know, obviously the losses tend to happen when you're hatching your own eggs. They tend to happen at the hatching time. Once they've hatched, it's very rare unless anything goes badly wrong

with a brooder or something like that. It is very rare to lose the chicks at that stage. Obviously, this is the part that when you order chicks from a hatchery, they would have covered those losses already. So they factor that in the price of the chicks that they sell you. that they sell you.

As far as hatchability, you know, if the eggs are certainly, particularly if you use your own eggs, you know, they're not shipped and your hatch rate is going to be, you should be able to expect 80 to 90% hatch rate, which is pretty comparable to what the commercial hatcheries, you know, would get.

As I say, you know, shipped eggs would perform a little less well. Pascal, I also wanted to ask just about, I know you don't run a hatchery, but I just, I wanted to ask you what you know about, you know, if you intend to source your eggs, how relatively easy or difficult that is when you're talking about um when you're after hybrids so not i mean i guess you can also speak to the just the rare heritage breeds too if you like but my friend was was uh specifically interested in sourcing the hybrid eggs yeah i mean and obviously my answers are not going to be specific to Canada because I don't particularly know what's available. offer day old chicks but also hatching eggs for a wide range of species,

whether they're heritage breeds or layers or hybrids. I know also that there are various companies which cater to the larger scale breeders The larger scale breeders and as far as, you know, young turkey poles or day old chicks or hatching eggs of those breeds. And they have a slightly different system. The smaller hatcheries tend to, you know, ship the eggs using USPS with the disadvantages that I've touched on earlier. I know that there are some of the other hatcheries that have their own transportation system and bring them to some distribution centers and in refrigerated trucks, et cetera, that are more catered to,

you know, for those larger scale breeders that are looking for, you know, hybrid layers or broilers. So there's a lot of choices out there. I mean, it really depends on, you know, what sort of breed you're interested in, you know, in starting your flock with or expanding your flock. So there are choices. Pascal, where can people find out more? Can you point them to your website and some of the resources you have? Yes, certainly.

We have a lot of resources on www.brinsea.com. That's B-R-I-N-S-E-A dot com. Right. Okay. Well, thanks. Well, I think we covered it, Pascal. I want to thank you very much again for agreeing to come on the show. I think this will be really helpful to those who are considering taking a leap. Oh, you're most welcome. All right. So that's it for this episode, folks. And next week,

guess what? Guess what? Some of you are going to be happy about this. The person I hear most about as far as guests go is our good friend Steve Solomon from Tasmania now. He's an American expat down there. You know who he is. A lot of you love those episodes that Steve has featured in.

And he's coming back next week. And he's going to be talking about foliar feeding. So, yeah, look forward to that, and I will talk to you then. Our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars and maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches

We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going

strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do