Incubator (egg)

The innovation of the electrically powered incubator with expanded capacity (early on Petersime offered a model holding 15,000 eggs) encouraged the growth of large scale commercial hatcheries.

[9] The incubator is an apparatus that is used to regulate environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and turning for successful hatching of the fertile eggs placed in an enclosure.

It is often used for growing bacterial cultures, hatching eggs artificially, or providing suitable conditions for a chemical or biological reaction.

Chicken eggs are recorded to hatch after about 21 days, but other species of birds can take a longer or shorter amount of time.

Robustness is a health criterion, originating in the embryonic life stage of the chicken – and correlating directly with the performance and resistance of individual chicks under differing farm conditions.

[13] Consequently, climate conditions cannot exactly be adjusted according to the needs of all the growing embryos and a compromise has to be sought to best suit the age groups presented in the setter.

They can be used in a farmhouse, such as a large chicken-raising facilities, or they can be found in a common classroom for students to observe the egg inside and when it hatches.

A modern egg incubator
Egyptian egg oven
Réaumur's incubator
A 20th-century postcard depicting eggs and a hatchling in an incubator for ostrich farming
A small incubator used to hatch quail eggs for nutrition research at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration during the 1960s to 1980s. The incubator is now on display at the FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.