Text Box: SUMMARY As can be seen incubation is not a subject to be taken lightly. In a large project a 5% increase in overall hatchability can be the difference between a good and average breeding season. But with preplanning and close monitoring coupled with lessons learned from previous mistakes, each season should show a steady improvement. As to preplanning, we are agents for a number of makes of incubators and each season at least 50% of customers order an incubator and expect a crash course in its use, only when their birds have laid their first egg. This obviously is far from ideal. We find that the cause of most failures in artificial incubation, is not the fault of the incubators but of the people in charge of operating them. To think the key to success is that you simply unpack the machine, plug it in and just fill with eggs (as a lot of people do) usually leads to a disaster. You may detect that I am biased toward the use of incubators, mainly down to the control factor. But please consider all your options before deciding on the course, which suits your own circumstances and expectations. With artificial incubation there are many skills to learn such as how to repair a slightly damaged egg or when and if to help an egg in hatching, to name but a couple. But at the same time as well as some heartache, incubation can be very rewarding even with all the worries associated with it. In the next and final article of this series, we will cover the rearing of eyasses and its associated problems.

The rate at which eggs lose weight, can and must he controlled by the various methods including increasing and decreasing relative humidity within the incubator, to help maximise hatchability. It should be understood that every egg has its individual needs during incubation, and unlike commercial chicken and game bird hatcheries where the optimum incubation parameters are set to hatch the average egg, leaving the slightly Under par eggs to perish, in raptor breeding we always aim to maximize productivity. Many breeders opt not to weigh their eggs, claiming that it isn't necessary.   However it is like training a raptor without weighing it, of course it's possible but the risks of'

it starving or being lost increases dramatically.

Attention to detail and the closest monitoring are necessary if you are to achieve the high rates of' hatchability required. You will find with experience that even two sister eggs from the same clutch may need totally different humidity settings to reach the required weight loss goal. This means individual attention is

crucial.  There are several excellent commercially available computer programs to assist in this area. Due to lack of space I cannot delve any deeper at this point, but there are numerous books on incubation covering various aspects of' controlling weight

loss in eggs (of which there are many).

 

Modern Captive Breeding – Part III  ...continued

 

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