Setting up an incubator for quail eggs

An incubator is a box that holds a temperature. That's the whole product. And yet the gap between a 20% hatch and an 85% hatch is almost entirely down to how you set it up in the first three hours.

This is our setup routine for coturnix quail eggs, and the things we got wrong before we worked it out.

Run it empty for 24 hours first

Do this. Every time, even with an incubator you've used before.

Switch it on, close the lid, and leave it alone for a full day before an egg goes anywhere near it. You're not warming it up — you're finding out whether it actually holds the temperature you asked for, and where in the room it needs to sit.

An incubator in a draught, next to a radiator, or in a conservatory with afternoon sun will swing wildly. A stable spare room with no direct sunlight is what you want. Airing cupboards are usually too warm.

The built-in thermometer is lying to you

This is the single biggest thing we'd tell a beginner.

The display on a cheap incubator reports the temperature at its own sensor, which is often at the top of the chamber, and it can be out by a degree or more. A degree matters enormously across 17 days.

Buy a separate digital thermometer and hygrometer — the little ones sold for reptile vivariums are a few pounds — and put the probe at egg height, in the middle of the eggs. Then trust that, and adjust the incubator's dial until the probe reads what you want, regardless of what the display says.

If you want to be thorough, check your thermometer against a known reference before you start. Two cheap thermometers that agree with each other are more reassuring than one on its own.

The numbers

	Forced air (with fan)	Still air (no fan)
Temperature, days 1–14	37.5 °C (99.5 °F)	38.3 °C (101 °F) at egg top
Humidity, days 1–14	45–55%	45–55%
Turning	Odd number of times daily, minimum 3	Same
Lockdown from	Day 14	Day 14
Humidity, days 14–17	65–70%	65–70%
Hatch	Day 17	Day 17

Note the still-air figure is higher. That's not a mistake — still air stratifies, so you're measuring the warm layer at the top of the eggs. If you have a fan, ignore the still-air column entirely.

Our incubation calculator will work out your candling, lockdown and hatch dates if you tell it when you set the eggs.

Choosing and storing eggs

Hatch rate is decided before the eggs go in.

• Fresh is best. Under 7 days old ideally. Hatchability falls off noticeably after 10 days and badly after two weeks.
• Store at 15–18 °C, pointy end down, and turn them once a day while stored. A cool room, not a fridge — fridge temperatures damage them.
• Don't wash them. Eggs have a natural protective coating (the bloom) and washing removes it, letting bacteria straight through the shell. Set only clean eggs; discard visibly dirty ones rather than scrubbing.
• Reject anything cracked, misshapen, unusually large or small, or with a thin or chalky shell.
• Rest them 6–12 hours at room temperature before setting, especially if posted. Posted eggs have had a rough time and benefit from standing pointy-end down for a day first — expect a lower hatch rate from them regardless.

Setting the eggs

Once the incubator has been stable for 24 hours, put the eggs in and close the lid. Day 1 starts now.

The temperature will drop, and that's fine. You've just put a load of cool objects in. It may take several hours to recover. Do not turn the thermostat up to speed it along — that's how eggs get cooked. Leave it alone and let it come back on its own.

Resist opening the lid for the first few days. Every peek costs heat and humidity.

Turning

Eggs need turning so the embryo doesn't stick to the shell membrane. An automatic turner handles this; if you're turning by hand:

• Mark each egg with an X on one side and an O on the other in pencil, so you can see at a glance which have been done.
• Turn at least 3 times a day, and always an odd number — that way they don't spend every night on the same side.
• Wash your hands first. Roll them gently; don't lift and flip.
• Stop turning at day 14. This matters — the chick is positioning itself to hatch and turning after this point can stop it getting into position.

Humidity, and why dry is safer than wet

Humidity is the part people fiddle with most and understand least.

During incubation the egg needs to lose moisture — about 12% of its weight across the run — so that an air cell forms big enough for the chick to breathe from before it breaks the shell. Too much humidity and the air cell stays small, the chick is oversized and waterlogged, and it drowns during hatching. This is far more common than the opposite.

So if you're unsure, err on the dry side during days 1–14. Around 45% is fine. Some keepers run "dry incubation" with no added water at all in a humid climate, and get excellent results.

Then at lockdown, humidity goes up, to 65–70%. This keeps the inner membrane soft so the chick can turn and cut its way round. A chick that dries out mid-hatch gets shrink-wrapped and stuck, which is the other way hatches go wrong.

Candling

Quail eggs are speckled, which makes candling harder than with chicken eggs — the dark pigment blocks the light. Use a bright, narrow torch in a completely dark room, and press the egg against the beam.

Candle at day 7 and again around day 14 if you like. You're looking for:

• Developing: a dark spot with spidery blood vessels radiating out, and later a clear air cell at the blunt end.
• Clear: nothing but a glow. Infertile, or died very early.
• Blood ring: a distinct dark ring round the shell. Started and stopped.

Remove clears and blood rings — they can go bad and, at worst, burst and contaminate the whole batch. If you genuinely can't tell (very likely with dark-speckled eggs), leave it in. An uncertain egg does less harm staying than a viable one does being binned.

Lockdown, day 14

Three things happen at day 14:

1. Stop turning. Remove or switch off the turner.
2. Raise humidity to 65–70%. Add water to the reservoirs, or a damp sponge for more surface area.
3. Close the lid and do not open it again.

That third one is the discipline test. Opening the incubator during hatching dumps the humidity in seconds, and the membrane around a chick that's part-way out dries onto it like cling film. If you must open it — genuinely must — do it fast and have a damp cloth ready.

Also lay something down for grip. Chicks on a slick plastic floor splay their legs, which causes spraddle leg. Rubber shelf liner or a piece of non-slip matting under them prevents it.

Hatch day

Day 17, give or take. Some come early on day 16, stragglers arrive on day 18. Anything much later usually isn't coming.

The whole business — first pip to fully out — takes many hours per chick, and it looks alarming. We've written what to expect, and when helping does more harm than good, in Hatch day: what actually happens.

Leave chicks in the incubator until they're fluffed up and dry, usually 12–24 hours. They absorbed the yolk before hatching and don't need food or water yet. Then move them to a brooder that's already up to temperature — our week one guide covers the setup.

Afterwards: clean it properly

An incubator after a hatch is a warm, humid box containing shell fragments and unhatched eggs. It is a superb environment for bacteria, and next season's poor hatch rate often starts here.

Strip it, wash everything in hot soapy water, disinfect with a poultry-safe disinfectant, rinse and dry completely before storing. Don't put it away damp.

If your hatch was poor

A quick diagnostic. Open the unhatched eggs — unpleasant, but genuinely the fastest way to learn:

• All clear, no development: infertile eggs, or a male-to-female ratio problem, or eggs too old. Not an incubator fault.
• Died in the first week: temperature spikes, or rough handling of the eggs before setting.
• Fully formed but never pipped: usually humidity too high through days 1–14, so the air cell never got big enough.
• Pipped then died: usually humidity too low at lockdown, or the lid was opened.
• Early hatch, sticky chicks: running too warm.
• Late hatch, slow chicks: running too cool.

Write down what you did. The keepers with reliable hatches aren't luckier — they've just got notes from the last six attempts.