The 5 Best Egg Incubators [Ranked]
Automatic egg incubators are a great way for novices and professional hatchers alike to incubate different types of eggs - be they chicken, turkey, quail or even reptile (Source).
That said, incubating these eggs is not a set it and forget it process - you will have to manually turn the eggs and keep a close eye on the temperature to ensure successful and optimal hatch rates (Source).
There will be some trial and error, especially if you are a first time hatcher, but with the proper care and consideration, you will undoubtedly become proficient at using one of these incubation devices (Source).
Contents
One Of Our Favorites: The HovaBator
This incubator Includes an integrated thermometer and hygrometer digital display.
The complete kit ships with the incubator, an auto turner and egg candler.
The auto egg turner is designed to roll eggs just like in nature.
HovaBator Video Overview
Let's take a look at our ratings of the 5 best-selling egg incubators on the market.
| Egg Incubators | Our Rating (1-5) | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Magicfly Digital Eggs Incubator with Egg Turner | 4.3 | $$ |
  | Genesis Hova-Bator (1588) Incubator | 4.6 | $$$ |
 | Fall Harvest Circulated Air Incubator | 3.2 | $$ |
 | IncuView All-In-One Automatic Egg Incubator with built-in Automatic Egg Turner | 3.9 | $$$ |
 | Wookrays Mini Hatching Egg Incubator | 2.7 | $ |
How To Incubate Eggs At Home
The Five Best 5 Egg Incubators
Effectiveness
Price
Ease of Use
The MagicFly egg incubator is a highly versatile device- equipped to hatch eggs for ducks, chickens and geese. It is made from safe PVC+PP material and it comes with a manual egg turner, auto thermometer and LED display. It is highly portable and can fit up to 10 eggs at a time.
Video Overview
Pros
- Comes with a 1 year warranty
- Has high hatching rate based on user reviews
- Users commend how quiet it is
Cons
- You can’t see through the incubator which can be a problem when the eggs start to hatch because you will have to lift the lid to inspect
- No humidity sensor
2. The Genesis Hova-Bator Incubator Review
Effectiveness
Price
Ease of Use
This small egg turner is ideal for small-scale and backyard poultry raisers as it has relatively small dimension of: 18.5″ by 18.5 by x 9 .5″. It has a capacity to hatch up to 50 duck or chicken eggs or 130 quail eggs. Included with this egg hatcher is a thermostat that comes preset for bird eggs and is self-regulating. Moreover, its settings are not affected by a changes in humidity, dust or temperature. It has received the highest ratings of the group from its users for its construction quality and hatch rate.
Video Overview
Pros
- LCD display shows the set and actual temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius
- Humidity percentage displayed for easy monitoring
- Comes with 1 year manufacturer's warranty
Cons
- A fairly delicate construction- as it is made of styrofoam and without a plastic shell for protection
- A bit of a pain to clean
Effectiveness
Price
Ease of Use
This incubator sports an especially robust capacity of up to 52 eggs. The Fall Harvest Circulated Air incubator operates on 115 volts of household current. It is fitted with a circulating fan, solid state temperature control, and large viewing windows so you can clearly monitor progress and see the chicks when they hatch.
Pros
- Includes an insulating polystyrene foam housing that is useful for maintaining a constant temperature of 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal hatch rate
- Comes with an incubator liner designed for protection and easy cleaning
Cons
- The temperature is controlled by manual turning
- Some complain that the fan is too loud
- Some reviewers noted that they replaced the included thermometer
Effectiveness
Price
Ease of Use
If you are looking for a device for incubating eggs for beginners, this can be a good choice as it features automatic control in Fahrenheit and Celsius. It is also fitted with a transparent viewing dome, automatic egg turner, digital display and humidity gauge that allow you to easily monitor the eggs. With a durable plastic construction, it can safely hold up to 26 chicken or goose eggs.
Pros
- Includes a built-in hatch timer that will keep track of the hatching schedule
- Its plastic construction makes cleaning easy
Cons
- Takes some time to get the right humidity
Effectiveness
Price
Ease of Use
This incubator is an affordable, value option with with a pretty low egg capacity of only 7 eggs. It’s a good starter unit before committing to a more professional setup. It comes with a built-in temperature control system that can be adjusted from 18 to 45 degrees. That said, there is no way to measure humidity with this unit and one user writes that they had to check in and turn the incubator 3x a day. However, with a little elbow grease this unit can do in a pinch for a beginner.
Pros
- Small and portable
- Great for beginners
- Most affordable option
Cons
- Based on reviews, this device becomes too crowded for 7 large eggs as it makes turning and final preparation difficult
- Because of its very small size, humidity can be difficult to control and it doesn’t come with a humidity reader
- It takes more effort to use because you need to manually turn the eggs everyday.
How Do Egg Incubators Work?
An egg incubator is commonly employed to hatch a bird or reptile egg. The incubator maintains the temperature needed to keep the bird or reptile eggs warm, enabling the fetuses within the egg shells to develop and hatch without having the mother hen or lizard there to facilitate the process.
The egg incubator is usually fixed at 98°F (37°C), and the eggs are put within. Poultry eggs typically will hatch soon after a 3 week period, whereas various other birds might take different amounts of time than this.
There are numerous benefits to using an egg incubator. A good reason is the fact that a farmed with a chicken coop wishes to hatch some baby birds, but he doesn't have any hens available to nest.
Incubators may also be employed in huge fowl raising businesses. An additional popular usage of incubators is in school rooms, in which pupils find out about farm animals and the miracle of life by observing the fowl eggs hatch following an incubation period of 21 days.
Incubators are most frequently utilized to develop chicken eggs, however they work extremely well almost any kind of fowl, including geese, ostriches & penguins. Incubators may also be used to hatch lizard eggs, even though this is not as typical.
Eggs for chickens, quails, geese, and other alike fowl are around for acquisition either online from an e-retailer or via an agricultural supply store. Eggs tend to be delivered inside a cooler, and will survive for a few weeks in reduced temperature ranges. They need to be right away put into a heated egg incubator right after they come.
There are various sizes and types of egg incubators. Bigger incubators have got racks to support numerous layers of eggs, with a few supplying space for more than 300 eggs. Many are modest, possessing capacity for just a few eggs and are capable of sitting on a desktop.
In certain cases, the eggs are positioned in custom holders, while in other incubator models they're arranged freely. This will give the the baby birds space to maneuver after they have escaped their shells. Many incubators possess a built-in fan, helping to keep the air circulating and the environment controlled, and a watching eye-port at the top.
Egg incubators can be found for the most part at farm and garden supply locations or on the web. For individuals who take pleasure in crafts- it's actually easy to come up with a DIY incubator making use of materials generally located around the house. An egg incubator is a superb method to boost the quantity of birds you have on your farm or backyard coop. You need to understand that freshly born chicks must be maintained beneath a heat lamp for their first 3 weeks to ensure that they're kept from becoming too cold. From that point on, the the baby birds ought to be progressively brought in to the established flock to avoid the other birds from harming them.
What Are Buyers Saying?
- Many people that have purchased automatic egg incubators have done so for their children as a fun home agriculture project.
- While these different Egg incubators come equipped with most of the incubation tools you need, some users opt to purchase their own thermometers and equipment to measure humidity.
- When it comes to successful and optimal hatch rates, there is a fairly wide variation of success rates across the board for egg incubation devices and their users.
- MagicFly users commend how silent it is, how well it holds the temperature, and that it is large enough to hold plenty of water which does not evaporator too quickly, though users write that the instruction manual is pretty poor quality.
- One farmer writes of owning a chicken sanctuary where she has mother hens available to provide chick hatching, but also using these digital egg incubators when they aren't available.
- Many people don't realize that the egg turning has to be done manually-usually the mother hen will do this but if you are using one of these incubation devices it requires that you do it.
- Turning the eggs ensures that they develop healthfully and do not adhere to the membrane in the shell, which can result in a deformed or crippled chick.
- One of our users who is a licensed poultry technician recommends as his top pick the Genesis incubator- he writes that it is ideal for teachers in schools as well as for other smaller hatching jobs.
- In addition, it is large enough to be able to accommodate larger sized eggs and its design enables air circulation better than sharper cornered devices do.
- Some users were somewhat surprised regarding the Genesis tabletop incubator because it is made of a reinforced Styrofoam, when they were expecting something of sturdier plastic construction.
- The Genesis incubator, one reviewer has written us, has effective temperature controls, which is great because in their previous experience this user had an incubator end up overheating and killing all of the chicks.
