Incubation
Four factors are of major importance in incubating eggs artificially:
Temperature, Humidity, Ventilation and Turning.
Of these factors, temperature is the most critical. Humidity, however, tends to be overlooked and can cause many hatching problems.
Each factor or in combination can have detrimental effects on the hatching efficiency.
1. Temperature
Incubator temperature effect the incubation length dramatically.
Incubator temperature should be maintained between 35.5° and 36.5°. Overheating is more critical than under heating.
At Ingelosi we experienced satisfactory results with temperatures at 36.0°C.
2. Ventilation
The chick embryo uses oxygen and gives of carbon dioxide.
The best hatching results are obtained with normal atmospheric air, which usually contains 20-21% O2 [oxygen] and 0.03% CO2 [Carbon Dioxide]. It is difficult to provide too much oxygen, but a deficiency is possible.
3. Turning
When we talk about turning we have to look at three aspects- frequency, position and the angle of turn.
The eggs need to be turned a minimum of two times per day.
Position and the angle of turn goes hand in hand, if the position is upright then the angle of turn should be 90°. But if the egg lie on its side it should turn 180° along the long axis.
Poultry and ostrich hatch without problems in a vertical position. Emu do not have good results in the vertical position.
4. Humidity
The Emu egg will start to lose weight after it has been laid. This is due to the water that evaporates from the egg. The two factors that control this are the porosity of the shell and the humidity of the air around the egg.
We cannot control the shell porosity but we can control the humidity in the incubator. Humidity is the amount of water per kilogram dry air. Eg. 1000g of air at 36°C with a 30% relative humidity holds approximately 11g of water.
The relative Humidity of an incubator is usually set at 25-35% RH. The average weight loss is between 15% and 20%
At Ingelosi we achieved 87% at humidity of +/- 27% RH.
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