Hatching Peafowl Eggs

I learned a long time ago, if you can't hatch an egg, you aren't in the bird business.  And back then I couldn't.  Using cheap incubators got me nowhere.  Then a friend suggested I use Phoenix hens, and I was on my way.  After 16 years I still use them.  In fact I use a number of brood hens, but prefer Phoenix.  Phoenix have a larger breast for their size than most chickens.  This tends to make them a little ‘hotter’.  Peafowl eggs set under Phoenix usually hatch in 26 days instead of the 28 days if set under most other hens.  Besides that, they have small, tight fitting feathers, which tends to keep them clean.  Hens with fluffy feathering, as well as feather legged, like Cochins, don't do very well.  Their feathers are hard to keep clean, which means eggs can easily be contaminated.

The secret of using brood hens, is to have hens ready when you have eggs to set.  For this reason you will need more hens than you think. Phoenix usually start laying early, so I will sometimes gather their eggs and break them up from setting.  In a week or so they are back to laying again.  Some types of laying hens will become broody, if eggs are allowed to accumulate, for this reason I also raise Ameraucana.  
 
I use both penned  birds and yard birds.  In the pens, I wait until the hen is for sure setting, then switch eggs with her, preferably after sundown, when she is a little more laid back.  Then I set her eggs in an incubator.

As far as yard birds are concerned, I have Ameraucana laying hens as well as Phoenix.  Quite often the Phoenix will go to setting in the strangest places, some good, some not so good.  If I don't like where she is setting I move her to what I call ‘The Condos’.  It's  a wire cage with 8 compartments, each about 30 inches x 30 inches.  The condos are already set up with food, water, and nest box.  If the hen is moved at night, she will keep setting, but if she gets out she will try to go back to where she was before she was moved.

Now, on to incubators.  Through the years I have gotten better with machines, but don't like putting all my trust in them.  My rate of hatch is about the same with incubators as it is with brood hens.  On occasion I lose a clutch to snakes or hen abandonment, but if your thermometer is a few degrees out of calibration, you lose everything.  Most of my incubators are homemade: a simple false back to pull the air off the bottom, across the heat strips, and down again.  I built one for about $80 that will hold around 800 eggs.  The most important thing is controlling temperature and humidity.

Whatever type of incubator you use, make sure your thermometer is accurate.  I prefer the digital thermometer/hygrometer (I find them at Radio Shack).  Most have a minimum/maximum feature to give you 24 hour a day readings.  This is helpful if your incubators are located in an outbuilding, and nights become too cold for it to keep up.  Or like here in Texas, where last summer it got up to 113 degrees in the shade.  Cooler nights are not near as harmful to an egg as days that are too hot.

A lot of people might disagree with me on this,but I have never been able to hatch Peafowl eggs successfully with a relative humidity above 40%.  I only know what works for me, you may need to experiment.  At 2 - 3 days before hatch, I move the eggs to the hatcher where I keep the humidity between 80% and 90%.

Candling eggs is a must.  Candle the first time at about ten days, and once a week from then on. When I set eggs under hens, I try to set 4 or 5 clutches at the same time.  After candling the first time, and discarding infertile and bad eggs, I may be able to combine some and free up a hen.  I buy egg candlers from Randall Burkey.  They have the Cool Lite egg candler that I have found easy to use.

I will sometimes set a hen back to back, removing the eggs a day or two before they hatch and setting another clutch.  I just make sure she is fed well, and staying in good shape.

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02/10/07