How To Incubate Eggs from Mixed Birds Together

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Ducks and geese, chickens and turkeys. What do these two pairings have in common? They can be incubated together. In this episode, we’re learning about how you can successfully incubate mixed species of birds together and why you’d want to. Join me on [00:01:00] two interviews with some great poultry keepers, Rebecca Krebs and Patrice Lewis. First, we’re going to jump in on my call with Rebecca and we’ll hear from Patrice later on in the episode.

Since we have two different poultry keepers on the podcast today, they’re both coming with their own expertise and perspectives, so there may be some practices they do slightly differently based on their experiences. We encourage listeners to determine the right poultry keeping practices for their own situations.

This is MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

Why Incubate Mixed Birds?

Jessica Mitchell: Well, good day everyone, and we appreciate you for joining us on another exciting Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. I’m Jessica, and joining me today is Rebecca of North Star Poultry. At MOTHER EARTH NEWS, for 50 years in counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving our planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your [00:02:00] financial resources.

We’re gonna be talking about incubating mixed birds and everything that entails with Rebecca. So welcome to the podcast, Rebecca, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Rebecca Krebs: Thank you for having me.

Jessica Mitchell: We’re excited to get into this, uh, topic with you today. So to start, can you share a bit about yourself with our listeners, a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Rebecca Krebs: I own and operate in North Star Poultry here in Montana. We focus on breeding practical poultry and livestock for homesteads. Right now we specialize in heritage Rhode Island Reds, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, and four exclusive chicken varieties that we develop for laying and cold hardiness and beauty.

Jessica Mitchell: And then you were a contact that I connected with through Carla Tilghman over at Backyard Poultry. So it sounds like you have been involved with Backyard Poultry magazine?

Rebecca Krebs: Yes. I write for Backyard Poultry magazine and Goat Journal.

Jessica Mitchell: Oh, that’s great. Those are both such great titles. Well, we’re excited to have you on the [00:03:00] podcast. Uh, in addition to just explaining a little bit about who you are, what’s your personal experience in raising birds, even out of just this whole North Star Poultry business?

Rebecca Krebs: I started raising poultry when I was a little kid. My incubation experience, uh, my parents got me a tabletop incubator for my birthday one year when I was eight or nine. I started incubating with that. I developed the first of my exclusive laying varieties when I was 13 years old. From there, about a year after that I started North Star Poultry.

We’ve gradually expanded from there, and right now we’re hatching about a couple thousand to 10,000 chicks a year and ship all over the United states.

Jessica Mitchell: That is, I mean, I don’t know, just hearing that sounds so impressive to hear how you had such a passion for that at such a young age and decided to start a business from that.

Rebecca Krebs: Yeah, it was, I’ve always loved animals and poult.

Jessica Mitchell: Well, we’re gonna get into some incubation questions, and to start, I thought we could kind of touch on those more [00:04:00] general big questions when it comes to incubation. So my first question for you is, why would someone want to incubate different species of birds together?

Rebecca Krebs: Well, most people only have one incubator. So it’s really handy for them to be able to, uh, incubate everything together. They need to be able to hatch everything in that one incubator and do the right temperature and humidity and learn about those things so they can successfully hatch mixed species.

Jessica Mitchell: So when it comes to incubating mixed birds, so if we’re talking like chickens and turkeys or something like that, what really makes it possible to incubate two different types of birds together? Are there common pairings out there that people typically will do or are there pairings that are not recommended to incubate together?

Rebecca Krebs: You can incubate mixed species because most birds have similar, uh, temperature, humidity requirements for incubation. Uh, as far as pairings go, similar species like land fowl — turkeys, [00:05:00] chickens, those types of things — are good to incubate together.

Also, waterfowl, ducks and geese. Typically as far as avoiding certain pairings, chickens and waterfowl don’t do well together because their humidity requirements are quite a bit different.

Jessica Mitchell: And we’ll go into more detail later about those common incubation pairings, just as a note for our listeners. Uh, but that’s really good to know how a lot of times it really comes down to how there’s so many similar incubation requirements, so it’s just convenient to pair them together sometimes.

Rebecca Krebs: Yes.

Jessica Mitchell: So generally speaking, what are the benefits to incubating mixed birds and what are some of the challenges if you have two of them together?

Rebecca Krebs: So if somebody has a busy schedule with, which a lot of us do, it’s handy to be able to incubate everything at once and get it out of the way and not be tied down to incubator duties for couple months, months on end.

A lot of people also like to raise all their babies in the spring at the same time and get that out of the way. A lot of people like to do it that way. The primary challenge [00:06:00] is, I have found to incubating mixed species are their humidity requirements can be somewhat different. So you have to find a balance in the humidity.

And maybe not so much of a challenge as a consideration is they also have different incubation periods. So you have to set the eggs so that they hatch all at the same time, especially if you have one incubator that you’re going to be both incubating and hatching in. During hatch, humidity is very important to maintain, so you want to not disturb the hatch humidity if you, by going in and turning the eggs.

So you want, say, chicken and turkey eggs, chickens hatch 21 days, turkeys hatch 28 days. And you want to set the chickens about a week later than the turkeys so that they all hatch at the same time.

Experience Hatching Mixed Birds

Jessica Mitchell: Welcome to the podcast, Patrice.

Patrice Lewis: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Well, my husband and I left Sacramento back in 1993, and we moved to the country with a [00:07:00] goal of food self-sufficiency. So we spent 10 years on a small four acre parcel in Oregon, and then in 2003 we moved to North Idaho where we had a 20 acre property. And we made, we worked very hard over those two decades to make that property as self-sufficient as possible. And then of course, what did we do? We up and moved, essentially we were empty nesters and the house was too big for us, the usual excuses. So two years ago we downsized to a smaller piece of property.

We’re still in North Idaho, and we’re currently in the process of creating yet another homestead. So at least this time we have a better idea of what we’re doing. And during most of our married life, our income has derived primarily from a home woodcraft business, the business that our older daughter now runs.

So we’ve always been very frugal and very careful with our spending, and we’ve built a homestead very much on a shoestring basis.

Jessica Mitchell: Wow, that’s really cool to hear that. Now, what is your experience in raising birds?

Patrice Lewis: Well, as a kid, my family incubated. Oh, I remember quail and ducks and chickens. Not all at the same time. It was just kind of novelties for [00:08:00] a kid. But as adults, we’ve raised chickens for decades. Oddly, our experience in raising mixed birds, or I should say hatching mixed birds, came from the neighbors. Since, I guess we were the only incubator in the neighborhood, so we were always having, uh, neighbors come up and say, Hey, I’ve got a batch of duck eggs or a batch of goose eggs. Can you have some? And so we’d throw ’em in with our chicken eggs and, and come up with a bunch of mixed birds.

Jessica Mitchell: Wow, that’s really neat. Now, are there common pairings out there that are more likely to be seen on a hobby farm or farmstead or homestead? And are there pairings of birds that in your experience are not recommended?

Patrice Lewis: I have not seen any, not recommended except size differences. If you’re pairing quail against turkeys or geese, you’re gonna have kind of a problem, but for the most part, it’s just a matter of clever planning. Uh, you might have to be separating the, the chicks once they’ve hatched Again, if you’ve got something little, tiny and delicate, versus something comparatively big and honking, you just don’t necessarily wanna mix ’em together.

Planning Mixed Poultry Incubation

Jessica Mitchell: Regardless of species, [00:09:00] let’s just touch briefly on the general equipment and factors you need to consider to incubate eggs across the board.

Patrice Lewis: Well, essentially when people think in terms of incubating species together, they think about starting ’em all at once. “Hey, let’s throw in a bunch of goose eggs with the chicken eggs and the duck eggs and see what happens.” So there are basically, there are two ways to approach it. One is you throw everything in at the same time and then you accept the fact that they’re gonna hatch at different times. Or you factor in those different incubation times and you add eggs either earlier or later so that you can try to get everyone to hatch more or less at the same time.

And of these two options, it’s far better to plan for the eggs to hatch more or less at the same time. Since that way, you can increase the humidity, you can engage in the lockdown as well as stop turning at the proper time. All these little things you need to do with the conclusion of the hatching. And so all you have to do is you have to plan to add eggs at the correct time to coincide with this simultaneous hatching. But that’s just a matter of of “calendaring.”

So the only reason I can imagine justifying different hatch dates, [00:10:00] in other words, when you throw them all in at the same time, is when you spontaneously pop additional eggs or eggs with a longer incubation period into the incubator. Have actually, after you’ve already started a batch. It’s not ideal, but you know, you’ll have some success. You just have to be vigilant. And the nice thing about incubators, most incubators on the market these days is most have the temperature control, the automatic turning mechanism, things like that. And if you’re planning on hatching mixed birds on a regular basis, it’s best to look for an incubator that has those different sized egg cradles available. Most of them have options these days.

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Choosing an Incubator by Egg Size

Jessica Mitchell: And now back to our episode about incubating mixed birds. We’ll continue with my interview with Patrice who’s going to highlight some possible bird pairings for incubation. Later on. Rebecca will share a couple more pairings from her experience.

Okay, so let’s go into some of those possible pairings for incubation. We’re gonna highlight with you today, chickens, ducks, and geese, and all of those different factors when it comes to incubating them and what you have to consider, especially when you’re mixing different types of birds. So let’s start with egg size. How does egg size come into play when selecting an incubator?

Patrice Lewis: Probably the most important thing to consider is the cradle size for the egg holders. A goose egg is about twice the size of the chicken egg, so if the egg simply falls out of the cradle during its [00:12:00] automatic rotation, that’s obviously gonna be a problem.

The advantage is that there’s just so many different types of incubators on the market today, and many of them, if not most, have been designed to accommodate different sized eggs ranging from, you know, quail, little tiny quail eggs up to goose eggs. So if you’re planning on hatching mixed birds, especially on a regular basis, all you have to do is make sure your incubator choice will allow for whatever type sized eggs that you’ll be hatching.

Jessica Mitchell: And how long does it take for these eggs to hatch, the chickens and duck and goose eggs?

Patrice Lewis: Well, a standard chicken egg of course, has incubation period of three weeks, 21 days. And this is usually sort of the benchmark for hatching mixed birds. Turkeys have an a longer incubation period, I think it’s 28 days. Ducks are also 28 days, although Muscovy ducks take 35 days. So again, there’s a little variation depending on what you’re raising. Geese can range from 28 to 35, depending on the size of the breed. There are online charts available for detailing all the incubation periods for the different species. So when hatching different eggs, what I like to do is mark the [00:13:00] date on each egg when the incubation started. Uh, that kind of helps me keep track of them.

Controlling Incubator Temperature and Humidity

Jessica Mitchell: So do the temperature and humidity requirements vary a lot for chickens, ducks and geese?

Patrice Lewis: They do vary. Most eggs can be incubated between 98.8, almost 99 degrees and 102. And what they say is variations of more than one degree from the optimal for the species will adversely affect the number of eggs that successfully hatch.

But you know, there’s only so much you can do with a home incubation, a home incubator to keep the temperature at the perfect level. So as a rule of thumb, about 101 degrees Fahrenheit is a good centrist temperature. Humidity is critical. Eggs lose a lot of water during the incubation period. And so, the rate of loss will depend on the relative humidity that’s maintained inside the incubator itself. Most species require a relative humidity of say, 60% to 65% until about two days before the eggs are due to hatch, after which you need to raise it to about 70%. So [00:14:00] most incubators have like little extra water pans that you can add water to during this period.

But essentially you need to check that humidity you need to check that those water pans, those reservoirs, uh, at least every three or four days during the incubation period. It’s one of those things where you just don’t wanna mess around with humidity or think that it’s not important because there’s just nothing more tragic than watching a hatching chick whose shell membrane dries out from the lack of humidity and then they can’t complete the hatch. They almost always died. It’s very sad.

Also developing embryos do need oxygen from the atmosphere and cause they do, they release carbon dioxide, so most incubators have built-in ventilation. You don’t want an airtight chamber.

Turning and Candling Eggs During Incubation

Jessica Mitchell: During that incubation time, what are the turning and handling or handling needs for these eggs?

Do they vary a lot across the board for ducks, chicken, and geese?

Patrice Lewis: Not really actually. They all, they all require roughly the same thing. Eggs should always be placed in the egg cradles. The large side up the, the pointed side down. An [00:15:00] extremely poor hatch will occur if the eggs are placed, flipped up with a small side up.

However, a pretty good hatch could be obtained at the eggs are just placed on their side. In other words, if you don’t have cradles, if you’re just laying them on their side, in that case, however, you have to make sure you turn those eggs several times a day, at least four times a day. And the reason for turning is a couple of reasons. One is the embryo will not stick to the shell, and rotation is also important to ensure that the embryo gets all the albumin that it, the egg white, albumin it takes. It’s a mixture of water and protein. And it makes up the egg white and it’s part of the embryo and it provides nutrients to the developing chick.

And so if they’re not turned properly, they don’t receive the nutrients they need and get a either an undeveloped, underdeveloped, or a sickly chick. So most incubators have really nice little automatic egg turners. It’s a huge help, but if turning by hand it’s best to be very gentle, don’t just jerk ’em over. Uh, and eggs should be turned at least four times a day during each 24 hour period.

Candling eggs is actually a very handy method to [00:16:00] determine which eggs in your incubator are viable and actively developing. And essentially all it requires is a strong light and a dark background. So what you can do to candle is you simply backlight the egg with a strong flashlight, uh, in a darkened environment. Sometimes you can like sit the egg on the top of the flashlight pointing up. And there are actually even special candling lights available that have like a funneled end that concentrate light directly into the egg. Flashlights aren’t quite as efficient as this, although they’ll work. It’s one of those things where if you find yourself candling a lot of eggs, it’s probably worth the investment. About 15 bucks, it’s not very much. So developing eggs can be categorized roughly as they call them, winners, yolkers, and quitters. Winners are chicks which are developing normally, and after about six days of incubation, you’ll be able to see the blood vessels, which look like little, uh, red lines during the candling. Those are visible through the yolk and the interior of the egg, and those are the first visible sign of the developing chick. Yolkers are infertile eggs, [00:17:00] which just never begin developing at all. And then quitters are eggs that begin to develop and then suddenly stop. And so both the yolkers and the quitters will eventually start to rot, so it’s best to remove them from the incubator.

It is worth noting that eggs that have very, very dark shells can are more difficult to candle. And so for these eggs, you might try candling them beyond about 10 days of incubation, which is when the embryo is further developed and more clearly visible. But that said, you wanna candle eggs no earlier than 14 days. In other words, past 14 days, don’t bother. Because eggs that are handled beyond that stage, bacteria can be introduced into the developing egg and it can kill the chick. So about eight to 10 days is a good time to check their development. That’s your good rule of thumb.

Now, two days before the eggs are due to hatch is called the lockdown phase, for obvious reasons. And this is when you need to stop turning the eggs. You need to take them out of their cradles, lay them directly on the mesh screen over the water source. Then you need to add extra water to increase [00:18:00] the humidity, and then you just back off and leave the eggs alone. Don’t handle ’em. Don’t turn them. Don’t, don’t pick at ’em. Just let the chicks do their thing. It’s called a lockdown phase for a reason.

Tracking Set, Lockdown, and Hatch Dates

Jessica Mitchell: We kind of, these last few questions, it seems pretty uniform across the board outside of maybe how long it takes for eggs to hatch when it comes to those incubator requirements and potentially having two different kinds of birds together.

But our next question is tracking those set, lockdown, and hatch dates for eggs and how that can vary when you have two different birds in there. So could you give a walkthrough maybe of how you would do it if you were having a couple different birds all in the same incubator?

Patrice Lewis: Well, in that case, there is nothing more important than a calendar, and I’m the old fashioned type. I don’t, we don’t have smartphones or anything like that, so we just literally use the wall calendar. Um, you know, either just a little flip up page or the big, you know, year-at-a-glance type thing or whatever. But essentially what you do is you start with the birds with [00:19:00] the longest hatch time. Say your goose eggs, and you mark the date on the shell, and then you mark the date on the calendar.

Uh, and then you advance forward to say, okay, if I put them in on this date, they will be hatching out on that date. And then from there, you count backwards to when you will add eggs that have a smaller incubation time, like a, a chicken or quail eggs or something like that. So for example, if your goose eggs are gonna take four weeks and you add ’em in, your four weeks, you put the four weeks on the calendar and then you mark back on the calendar. Chickens take three weeks, so in one week from now, I will add these to the, the incubator, that kind of thing. And that’s how you wanna keep track with it. And this way, ideally all your eggs have approximately the same lockdown date and hatch time. And this is really why I like to add, uh, write on the shells, the dates that I added, the, the eggs to the incubator. It’s very helpful.

Jessica Mitchell: When you write those dates, I remember reading one time to be particular about the type of writing utensil you use to write on the shells. Is, is that correct?

Patrice Lewis: I tend to use a felt tip pen. A very fine tip felt tip pen. That way I don’t have to [00:20:00] press hard with the, with the ballpoint pen you’d have to press harder. You wanna disturb the, the shell as little as possible. And so felt tip, I can just, you know, really lightly write on it. You don’t have to, you know, make big, you know, glaring marks or anything like that. So to me, that’s the most effective way to do it.

Jessica Mitchell: Now during these, you know, the incubation period and even the lockdown and, and hatching period, what are some potential issues or challenges that can arise?

Patrice Lewis: Well, I would say that aside from finding flawed eggs, like eggs with cracks or eggs that are infertile, the two issues that come to mind is during incubation is letting the water trays go dry. Big, big no-no. And dealing with power outages. So, uh, if you’re, since presumably, you know, you’re using your calendar anyway to keep track of your dates, that’s why I like to mark the shells. But on the calendar, also write down the days you should be checking the water and adding more if necessary to keep the humidity up. This is where you just don’t wanna let that air go dry. Or the poor little babies, they’ll hatch, they’ll die during the hatching. They just won’t make it.

Power outages can be a little more dicey. If your region is, is [00:21:00] subject to random and variable power outages, it might be useful to get a battery backup for the incubator. We live in a place, for example, where four day outages just are not uncommon. So I have a battery backup to power my, my laptop, my computer if the, if the electricity goes out, it looks kinda like a, a portable car. And it’s, you know, I can just plug the computer into it and anything can be plugged into it. So it would support an incubator. So that’s a good little backup to have. That’s the kind of thing where if the power goes out for a long time, you’re gonna have a really hard time maintaining that temperature.

Foster Chickens: Broody Hen Hatching Eggs for You

Jessica Mitchell: Now we were talking mainly about incubators. You know, the, the things that you can buy, but sometimes there’s an instance where someone might have a broody bird available. Do you have any experience in understanding the species or breeds that tend to do well as foster mothers for eggs that you want to incubate?

Patrice Lewis: Oh, there’s just nothing better than a broody bird, I’ll tell you. You know, some, some breeds of chicken, like I said chickens are the things we have the most experience with. [00:22:00] And some, some breeds of chickens are just famous for their broodiness. Bantys are just really, really notable for that. Uh, some breeds the, the broodiness has been bred out of them, but there are some that just can’t wait to sit on an egg.

And then now of course, fitting a, a duck or a goose egg under a banty could be challenging, but if she’s broody, she’ll try her best. We also raised Jersey Giants, and I was amazed how frequently those hens went broody. I mean, it, it was all we could do to keep every one of them from sitting on some eggs.

So both Bantys and Jersey Giants make excellent moms. You know, essentially any hen that goes broody is likely to do an adequate job, uh, fostering hatchlings. Even if they’re different species. Again, just be sure to write the date on the egg when you slip it under the broody hen. The one thing to keep in mind is if you have a small hen, such as a Bantam, she might not be able to turn large eggs such as goose eggs. So it’s best to match the egg size to the hen as closely as possible. It’s not always possible.

And also you might wanna watch out putting different-sized eggs under a [00:23:00] broody hen. So if you’ve got some really big eggs and some really small eggs, some might not get adequately turned, some might get crushed. You know, in other words, don’t make it more difficult for your foster hen than it has to be. Try to match the sizes as, as best you can.

Keep in mind too that for a chicken, her instinct is to set for 21 days, and which is the amount of time her eggs would take to hatch. So most hens will set for a longer period of time, but it’s not guaranteed. So if you have eggs under her with a much longer incubation period, there’s a risk she might abandon the nest halfway through the job, which is another good reason to date the eggs underneath her. So essentially, if you’re letting a broody hen set mixed birds, you need to sort of treat her like you would an incubator and put the longest incubating eggs under her first and then add shorter incubating eggs at the appropriate time. And this allows her babies to hatch more or less, uh, at the same time.

Now, if you’re helping a broody hand turn her eggs, let’s say you’ve got a small hen and some big eggs, the most critical time to turn the eggs, is first week of incubation. And so [00:24:00] what a lot of people do is they’ll mark an egg with like an X on one side and a and an O on the other. So if you’re turning the eggs three or four times a day, you know, at one time you’ll flip them over to the O side and the other time you flip them over to the X side, you know, this kind of thing.

We actually have also slipped, newly hatched chicks that we hatched in our incubator under a broody hen whose own eggs weren’t hatching. We had this, oh, this was so much fun. We had this patient, sweet, gentle, uh, chicken. Her name was, uh, Smokey, and she had been sitting on eggs for six bloody weeks. She had sat for the first three weeks and nothing happened. So I took out the batch and I put some more eggs underneath her and she sat for another uh, three weeks and nothing happened.

And she was just so patient. So meanwhile, we had a fresh batch of nine chicks in our incubator. So we slipped all of those chicks underneath her, and you never saw a happier hen. She raised every single chick successfully. And like I said, her name was Smokey, so we called her foster chicks The Bandits. So we had Smokey and the Bandits for anyone who remembers the old television show.

But that [00:25:00] was just a fun time. I you, I don’t, you don’t think chickens have expressions on their face, but when she first heard that peep underneath her, she was, uh, she was in chicken heaven.

Expert Incubation Tips

Jessica Mitchell: Were there any other things on your notes that you wanted to share or any other points that we may have missed?

Patrice Lewis: Yeah, I have a few things.

One is when you’re using an incubator, you wanna get it started about two days in advance of when you put the eggs in there. And this allows you time to tweak the temperature and tweak the humidity and make sure that you know that the egg turner rotation thing works and all this kind of stuff.

And you also wanna make sure the incubator where you place it, it’s not in direct sunlight or it’s not in a drafty place. Now when you’re collecting fertile eggs to incubate, don’t refrigerate them. The best thing to do is store them, you know, tip side down, pointed side down and about, you know, 55, 65 degrees, and just hold them at kind of like a, a cool room temperature.

It’s best to start incubating eggs within seven days of them being laid. Certainly no more than 10 days, so anything less than 10 days, you’re likely to have much, much higher success. [00:26:00] Also, if you’re collecting eggs from, from your own coop, don’t wash them. Choose clean eggs to incubate. You don’t wanna wash them or even wipe them down, before putting them in the incubator, because eggs are laid with a kind of a, “bloom” that defends against bacteria. So you don’t wanna interfere with that bloom.

Also, and this is something that a lot of people have tried with poor success, don’t try to incubate any egg oddity, double yoked eggs, or what we always called fairy eggs, which are a little tiny new pullet eggs laid by young hens. Anything too large or too small, it might result in a hatchling that is either weak or improperly developed. And of course, make sure your eggs don’t have any cracks. And then in the excitement of hatching little chicks or ducklings or, or geese or whatever, you don’t wanna forget about their post incubation care. So you wanna have, you don’t wanna keep the newly hatched chicks in the incubator for more than a few hours after they’ve dried out. So for this reason, you need to have a brood box, uh, ready to go. Uh, you can either separate them according to species or you could mix ’em together when they’re that young. It doesn’t matter. And we [00:27:00] tend to be pretty low tech in this regard. We usually, literally just have large cardboard box with wood shavings or soft hay. And we use a gooseneck lamp for heat. Other people use a, a suspended heat lamp.

And we also make it a habit, at least with chicks because that’s what, what we’re most experienced with, we dip each chick beak in water and teach them to drink. And you know, of course you wanna make sure you’re not dipping their beaks in as far as the nostrils. You don’t wanna drown the poor things. But, um, but it does help. It’s, since they don’t have a mother to show them, it’s helpful, teach them how to drink. So if you dip their, their beak in water, they will instinctively tip their head up, let the water run down their throat, and that’s how they learn.

Jessica Mitchell: Where can people connect with you and, and follow what you’re up to?

Patrice Lewis: I have a website that’s just an information website, so I don’t update that on a regular basis. And that’s just PatriceLewis.com. My blog is actually where I’m most active, and that is Rural-Revolution.com. Make sure that hyphen is in there. Otherwise it takes you, God knows where. And I don’t actually have any other social media presence, [00:28:00] so the blog is the best place to find me.

Jessica Mitchell: Great, well, we can put those in our show notes if listeners wanna connect with you and see what you’re up. Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you for sharing all of that great information.

Patrice Lewis: Well, thank you. It’s, it was a pleasure.

Incubating Turkey Eggs with Chicken Eggs and Duck Eggs with Goose Eggs

Jessica Mitchell: What are some of the typical pairings that you have experienced in when it comes to incubating mixed birds?

Rebecca Krebs: I have primarily done chickens and turkeys together. We regularly do that at our hatchery. I also have done quite a few geese and ducks.

Jessica Mitchell: Let’s actually look at all four of these birds you had mentioned: chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks.

How long does it take for each of these eggs to hatch?

Rebecca Krebs: Chickens takes 21 days. Turkeys, 28 days. Ducks, 28 days, other than Muscovy ducks take 35, 37 days. Geese take, uh, 28 to 32 days.

Jessica Mitchell: So they’re all fairly close together, but there is some variation there. I [00:29:00] wanted to touch on, uh, temperature and humidity requirements for these eggs.

I guess we could take a look at all of them. Are they all pretty similar in terms of temperature and humidity requirements, or are there any big outliers there?

Rebecca Krebs: Temperature, they are all are pretty similar. They can all be incubated at about 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. And then during hatch, that last three days of lockdown, you can drop the temperature to 98.5. Um, humidity there is more variation. Chickens are about 45%, 50% humidity. Turkeys about 55%, 60%, and waterfowl can be upwards of 55% or 65%. That’s during incubation, also higher during hatch. The thing about humidity though, is that it varies, what actually works varies quite a bit based on region as well as the time of year.

When you’re looking at humidity, you want to be familiar with the proper egg dehydration, which you can see in graphs of that kind of stuff just available [00:30:00] online. Make sure you understand what proper dehydration looks like so that if you have the eggs are not dehydrating at the proper rate, you can make adjustments in the incubation.

The other thing that must be taken into consideration is that incubator instructions vary, for temperature, depending on if it’s a still air or forced air incubator. The temperature settings for incubation in that incubator may be anywhere from 99 to 102 degrees. So always read your incubator instructions for both temperature and humidity setting.

Jessica Mitchell: For still air and forced air incubators, if people have that question for you, do you recommend one kind or the other? Depending on the types of birds they wanna incubate?

Rebecca Krebs: Not so much for birds other than turkeys, ducks, geese are more sensitive to incubation variables than our chickens. Chickens are pretty, uh, adaptable, but forced air does tend to keep the temperature throughout the incubator more [00:31:00] consistent.

Still air incubators tend to vary more throughout the incubator, so when we use those, we measure the temperature in multiple places throughout the incubator to make sure that it is holding a regular temperature throughout the incubator. If there’s a very hot spot, you may avoid putting eggs in that spot or on the, or a very cool spot. There can be those hot and cold spots in still air incubators.

Challenges of Incubating Mixed Birds Together

Jessica Mitchell: On to the topic of tracking things on the calendar. I think this might be a great instance where we could first look at chickens and turkeys in kind of a little bit of a, an example case study. And then ducks and geese.

Rebecca Krebs: Turkeys take 28 days and chickens 21. If you want them to hatch at the same time, the chickens have to be set to incubate about seven days later. So the day you put your turkey eggs in, you would write on the calendar “set turkey eggs.” And then you wanna make a note for yourself to set the chicken eggs seven days after that. Then about three days before hatch, you’ll want to put them into lockdown [00:32:00] where you stop turning them. You increase the humidity for hatch, and you no longer open the incubator. You wanna make a note of that as well and as well as your hatch date.

Jessica Mitchell: And then when it comes to ducks and geese, is it kind of the same type of thing?

Rebecca Krebs: Yes, it is. Of course, ducks and geese typically hatch about the same time, so you don’t have quite the amount of logistics to remember and numbers to remember as chickens and turkeys.

Jessica Mitchell: So they would be a little bit easier to track.

Rebecca Krebs: Yes. If you’re doing Muscovy ducks, uh, then they hatch a week later than ducks and many geese.

Jessica Mitchell: What potential issues or challenges can arise during incubation? And maybe let’s first start with the idea of the challenges that come maybe with incubating chickens and turkeys together. You know, different types of birds, and ducks and gese. Are there any unique challenges there?

Rebecca Krebs: Chickens and turkeys, because turkeys need slightly higher humidity, you do have to find a balance in humidity between turkeys and chickens. [00:33:00] Especially during hatch. So what we generally try to do is mid-range on humidity during incubation between chickens’ and turkeys’ needs. And then during hatch, you lean more on the turkey side of the humidity because they tend to, what tends to happen with turkeys is if the humidity is too low, the membrane in the egg dries out and the turkeys cannot break out of it because it is too, uh, it’s too, it’s quite tough. Turkey membrane is quite tough and you end up with stuck turkeys, which isn’t, uh, which is no fun.

Jessica Mitchell: Yeah, that would ruin things. Well, what about ducks and geese? Do you run into humidity challenges like that for them, or are they pretty similar?

Rebecca Krebs: Not so much. They’re pretty similar. Waterfowl are pretty similar. Of course, if you’re incubating chickens and waterfowl, then you run into issues because ducks do — geese do not hatch well at chicken humidity.

Jessica Mitchell: Well, how about when it comes to general incubation challenges across the board, are there any that come to mind that you would want to share with listeners?

Rebecca Krebs: [00:34:00] Yeah. Bacterial infection is a, is something you have to consider, and one way of preventing that is making sure you’re putting clean eggs in the incubator and handling eggs with clean hands.

Bacterial infection is typically seen in a lot of dark spots inside the egg, abnormal dark spots, and if at hatch, what we call a sticky chicks. They, uh, have a difficult time breaking out and they’re very sticky and, um, pretty much need a bath to be able to function in life. One thing you can do to prevent that is weekly misting the eggs with hydrogen peroxide, that helps cut down on bacterial infection.

Best Broody Hens for Hatching Eggs

Jessica Mitchell: Now we talk a lot about when we’re incubating eggs using an incubator, but there might be some instances for listeners where they might have a broody bird available and want to use that bird to incubate the eggs instead of an incubator. So do you have any thoughts as to which species or breeds within a species tend to do well as foster mothers for eggs?

Rebecca Krebs: So the same [00:35:00] species as the eggs is always best because the offspring have better behavioral example to grow up with. If you can’t do the same species, chickens are pretty good all around mothers and you don’t wanna give land fowl like chickens and turkeys to waterfowl mothers because they’ll soak with water, the little chickens, turkeys, which they don’t like that.

As far as breeds go, there are so many breeds, it’s hard to cover them all. But for instance, with chickens, Silkies, most Bantam breeds, Buff Orpingtons, Cochins, Brahmas, most dual-purpose breeds. They’re all good foster mothers. And anytime you’re thinking about using a mother, you want to check that the breed is a reliable broody breed.

For instance, Khaki Campbells, ducks, they will go broody and they will hatch eggs, but as soon as they hatch them, they abandon the babies. So they, they don’t make good, they may seem like they do at first, but doesn’t work out in the end.

Jessica Mitchell: Are there any other tips that you wanted to [00:36:00] share with listeners?

Rebecca Krebs: Yeah, if you, a, a lot of people will get an incubator so that they can ship in rare breeds or expensive breeds and hatch them themselves. What I always recommend my hatching egg customers, when they’re thinking about doing that, use your own poultry’s eggs or a locally purchased eggs to test the incubator before you ship in those expensive eggs, just to make sure the incubator is functioning correctly and the settings are working for your area and all that before you go through shipping in eggs and the money and expense. Many times people will do that without testing the egg, without testing the incubator ahead of time, and then they’ve discovered it’s not adjusted quite right and they may lose most of the hatch due to that, which is a hassle when you’ve put that money and time into out of the area eggs.

Resources for Incubating Poultry Eggs

Jessica Mitchell: Do you have any resources that you’d like to share with our listeners if they wanna learn more about incubating mixed birds?

Rebecca Krebs: So, chicken, eggs, um, I would mainly stick with the incubator [00:37:00] instructions because chickens are pretty easy to hatch. If you want to learn more about chickens, just find a reliable person who has hatched chickens before.

The more sensitive species like ducks, geese, turkeys, you definitely want to learn about that more before you really delve into incubating those. Dave Holderread’s book, The Book of Geese, and Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks are great for waterfowl. And then Turkey Management by Stanley J. Marsden and J Holmes Martin is a good all around turkey book.

Jessica Mitchell: And of course, you know, Rebecca, you write for Backyard Poultry. We always love plugging some of our magazines that can be particularly helpful to listeners for episodes. So Backyard Poultry would be a great resource. And then of course our sponsor today Brinsea, they’re incubation specialists as well. So I’m sure if listeners have direct questions when it comes to incubation things in general, but also about their products, I’m sure they’d be also available to help and answer questions too.

Well, where can people connect with you or learn more about North Star [00:38:00] Poultry or follow what’s going on?

Rebecca Krebs: So my poultry website is NorthStarPoultry.com, and then our Nigerian Dwarf website is Krebs.Farm, and we have some farm updates on that website. We actually do not do social media at all, so I don’t have any of those things.

Jessica Mitchell: Thank you so much, Rebecca, for taking the time to share about your expertise when it comes to incubation. Did you have any last minute thoughts for our listeners before we wrap up?

Rebecca Krebs: You know, just have fun. Incubation isn’t really that difficult. Um, it’s so exciting to hatch little baby poultry, and life and all those things.

And it gets even funner the more you do it. I’ve been doing it since I was eight or nine in artificially incubating and before that with mother hens. And it’s still exciting to see those little chicks hatch.

Cultivate Kindness with More Mother Earth News and Friends

Jessica Mitchell: You’ve just listened to our episode about incubating mixed birds. You can reach us at letters@motherearthnews.com with any comments or [00:39:00] suggestions.

Our podcast production team includes Carla Tilghman Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, and Kenny Coogan. Music for this episode is “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw. This Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications. Learn more about us at www.MotherEarthNews.com.

Thanks again to Brinsea, our sponsor for this Mother Earth News and Friends podcast episode.

You too can experience the Brinsea difference in maximize your hatch rates with Brinsea incubators that monitor temperature and humidity and are made of antimicrobial materials. Brinsea ships worldwide and provides stellar customer support to answer all your. Hatch your chicks with Brinsea, the leader in innovative incubation research. Learn more at [00:40:00] www.Brinsea.com.

Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

Meet the Poultry Experts

Rebecca Krebs is a farm girl and freelance writer from the Rocky Mountains of western Montana, where she has raised numerous breeds of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. She owns and operates North Star Poultry, a small hatchery that specializes in heritage Rhode Island Reds, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, and four exclusive varieties of chickens she developed for egg production, cold-weather hardiness, and beauty. She and her family also breed APA-Standard-bred Bourbon Red turkeys, registered Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats, and Suffolk sheep. Rebecca’s goal is the preservation of old down-to-earth farming ways. In pursuit of that, she focuses on breeding poultry and livestock that are practical, efficient producers of eggs, milk, and meat for small homesteads.

Patrice Lewis lives on a small homestead in North Idaho. She is a wife, mother, author, blogger, columnist, and speaker. She has practiced and written about rural subjects for over 30 years. When she isn’t writing, Patrice enjoys self-sufficiency projects, such as animal husbandry, small-scale dairy production, gardening, food preservation and canning, and homeschooling. She and her husband have been married since 1990 and have two homeschooled daughters, both now adults.

Additional Resources

Learn more about North Star Poultry and Krebs Farm.

Follow Patrice Lewis on her website and at her blog, Rural Revolution.

Incubating Duck Eggs with Chicken Eggs by Marissa Ames.

Our Podcast Team:

Carla Tilghman, Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, and Kenny Coogan

Music: “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw

Listen to more podcasts at MOTHER EARTH NEWS PODCAST.

Check out the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Bookstore for more resources that may interest you.

Go to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Fair page for an opportunity to see some of our podcast guests live.

The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.

Ogden Publications strives to inspire “can-do communities,” which may have different locations, backgrounds, beliefs, and ideals. The viewpoints and lifestyles expressed within Ogden Publications articles are not necessarily shared by the editorial staff or policies but represent the authors’ unique experiences.