Practical, South Africa-specific advice for hatching better and building a poultry business, written by the team that supplies IncubatorPro incubators.
Free egg hatch date calculator. Enter the day you set your eggs to get candling days, lockdown day and hatch day for chicken, duck, quail and more.
Open calculator →Free hatchery profit calculator for South African farmers. Enter egg cost, hatch rate and chick price to see profit per batch and incubator payback time.
Open calculator →The difference between an incubator (setter) and a hatcher, when you need a separate hatcher, and how to move eggs on day 18.
Read guide →Manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic egg incubators compared: turning, temperature, humidity, hatch rates and cost, with tips for turning eggs by hand.
Read guide →How forced air and still air incubators differ, the right temperature for each, where to measure it, and why commercial incubators use a fan.
Read guide →How to choose the best egg incubator in South Africa: automatic turning, humidity control, backup power, warranty and size. A checklist before you buy.
Read guide →How an egg incubator works and what each part does: heating element, temperature controller and thermostat, fan, egg turner and motor, humidity system and sensors.
Read guide →How many watts an egg incubator uses, how to work out the electricity cost of one hatch in South Africa, and how to size an inverter or generator for backup.
Read guide →The right incubator temperature and humidity for chicken, duck, quail, guinea fowl and turkey eggs, with lockdown settings and South African climate tips.
Read guide →How to candle chicken eggs during incubation: what fertile, infertile and stopped eggs look like on day 7, 14 and 18, and when to remove them.
Read guide →Poor hatch rate? The 10 most common reasons eggs do not hatch in an incubator, from infertile eggs to humidity and power cuts, and how to fix each one.
Read guide →How to protect eggs in your incubator during load shedding and power cuts in South Africa: what to do in an outage and how to choose backup power.
Read guide →How to use an egg incubator from setup to hatch day: running it empty, setting temperature and humidity, loading eggs, turning, candling, lockdown and hatching.
Read guide →How often to turn eggs in an incubator, why turning matters, how to turn eggs by hand, and when to stop turning chicken, duck, quail, turkey and guinea fowl eggs.
Read guide →How many days chicken, quail, duck, turkey, guinea fowl and goose eggs take to hatch in an incubator, and what to do when the hatch is late.
Read guide →How to raise or lower incubator humidity, what to do if humidity is too high or too low, when to increase it for hatching, and how to check it with the air cell.
Read guide →Why you need a separate thermometer and hygrometer in your incubator, where to place it, and how to calibrate them with the ice-water and salt tests.
Read guide →When to move chicks from the incubator to the brooder, how long hatched chicks can stay in the incubator, and brooder temperatures for the first weeks.
Read guide →Can you hatch chicken eggs without an incubator? How to use a broody hen, what makes a warm box work, and why homemade methods often fail.
Read guide →How to make a homemade egg incubator from a cooler box: materials, safe thermostat and heater wiring, humidity, turning and testing.
Read guide →Step-by-step guide to starting a day-old chick hatchery in South Africa: customers, fertile eggs, incubator size, costs, profit and biosecurity.
Read guide →How big an incubator do you need? See chicks per batch and per month for every IncubatorPro model, from 360 to 20,000 eggs, and how to choose.
Read guide →Grants and loans for South African poultry farmers in 2026: CASP, the Land Bank Blended Finance Scheme, SEDFA, NYDA and how to apply with a proper quote.
Read guide →What a business incubator is, how incubation programmes like SEDFA's help small businesses in South Africa, including agricultural ones, and how to apply as a poultry or hatchery start-up.
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