John Metzer: [00:00:00] Stephen and I are, we’re both incubating birds that take almost four weeks. So, what works well with the guinea would work well with the ducks. The vast majority of our customers are buying smaller incubators, and we tried to do a poll one time of our customers of which incubator was best, and there wasn’t one that really stood out but you do want something that you can vary the amount of air going in, that you can, can close it up so no air is going in.
Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Jessica Mitchell: We’d like to thank our [00:01:00] sponsor for this episode, Brinsea. That’s B R I N S E A, chick incubation specialists. They’ve been focusing on egg incubator design continuously since 1976, resulting in egg incubators, chick brooders, and incubation accessories. They offer unparalleled practicality, reliability, superior hatch rates, and healthy chicks. Innovation you can trust.
Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone, I am Kenny Coogan and joining me on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends is John Metzer of Metzer Farms and Stephen Horst of Fifth Day Farm.
John created Metzer Farms in 1978. Metzer Farms now has hatcheries in California and Tennessee and specializes in shipping day old waterfowl to backyard enthusiasts, feed stores and commercial growers throughout the U. S.
Stephen Horst started helping his father in law, Joel Martin, J. M. Hatchery in 2007 [00:02:00] with guinea breeding, sexing broiler chicks, and managing the khaki Campbell and white muscovy duckling schedule. They added brown Chinese geese to Fifth Day Farm, Inc. and took over the Guinea hatchery in 2022.
Thank you both for joining us on the podcast
John Metzer: today. We’re glad to be here.
Kenny Coogan: John, I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve been raising ducks for over 20 years, and I know that they do make excellent mothers. Stephen, I’ve seen pictures of those guineas in the wild, flocks of 25, and they all have their little babies.
How are guineas with incubating their babies in captivity?
Stephen Horst: They’re a little bit different than hatching a chicken egg, the biggest difference being that they take 27 days to hatch versus 21 days like a [00:03:00] chicken and their shells are considerably harder, but temperatures and things are similar, but I can give you those temperatures and humidity settings if you’re interested.
Benefits of Using an Incubator for Guineafowl
Kenny Coogan: First, can you tell me, would you recommend people having the mother brood and incubate the eggs themselves, or what are the benefits of using an incubator?
Stephen Horst: Hen will lay a nest full of eggs and stop laying. If you keep gathering eggs, they’ll obviously lay more eggs. Guineas are considered a game bird, so they’re very flighty, so if they have a really private area to nest, they will, but they spook very easily, so you’d probably be better off incubating them because they’ll probably get disturbed and unless they have a really private place to brood a hatch.
Kenny Coogan: What species, and what breeds of guineas are we talking about? Are they similar [00:04:00] to each other? Because I love those vulturine guineas.
Stephen Horst: Yeah, so there’s a couple of different kinds of guineas. Some have big helmets, but the ones that we hatch are selected by a company in France, Grimaud Farms. So they actually switch to a galore bird. So they are the pearl or the gray guineas. If people are familiar with those, they have a little bit of a purple sheen on their neck. We call them the French pearl guineas or some people call them the jumbo guineas because they are selected more for meat production, but they are not sterile but they are pretty skittish.
Kenny Coogan: And they’re much cheaper than those vulturine guineas that I love.
Stephen Horst: Possibly. I never had the opportunity to buy vulturine guineas.
Kenny Coogan: I was seeing them and they were over $1, 000 for a breeding pair.
Stephen Horst: Wow.
Kenny Coogan: So maybe you could get into those.
Stephen Horst: This is much [00:05:00] more economical.
Kenny Coogan: Stephen, can you tell me if you’re going to use the incubator, what is the type of incubator you want to use for a guinea, or like what are the components that you’re most concerned about?
Temperature for Hatching Guineafowl
Stephen Horst: Pretty much any incubator will work.
As long as it is set up for chicken eggs. So, the guinea egg is slightly smaller than the chicken egg, but it’ll work no problem. The biggest thing is, yeah, like I said, 27 days to hatch versus 21. So the temperature should be if you’re seeing a multi stage in which most people would do, or it should be 99.3-99. 5 degrees. We single stage, so we vary that temperature, start at 99. 9 and lower it about a degree to 99. 5. Until we transfer and then we drop it another five degrees at transfer at day 24 and drop it [00:06:00] another five degrees till they’re done hatching at day 26.
John Metzer: 0. 5 degrees,
Stephen Horst: right? What did I say?
John Metzer: You said five degrees.
I don’t think you’re dropping it now. Correct.
Stephen Horst: 0. 5 degrees, half a degree. So we drop it a total of one degree during the hatch. Thank you, John.
John Metzer: One time we did have a machine that dropped 10 degrees and it did not hatch very well. So I wanted to jump in there to make sure.
Good Incubators for Ducks and Geeese
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, that was a good clarification. John, can you tell us, for ducks and geese, what are the components of a good incubator?
John Metzer: Well Stephen and I are, we’re both incubating birds that take almost four weeks. So, what works well with the guinea would work well with the ducks. The vast majority of our customers are buying smaller incubators, and we tried to do a poll one time of our customers of which [00:07:00] incubator was best, and there wasn’t one that really stood out but you do want something that you can vary the amount of air going in, that you can, can close it up so no air is going in.
It’s ideal to have a fan and again, both of us, or at least myself, have very little experience with smaller incubators. Our incubators are big enough you walk into.
Kenny Coogan: Stephen mentioned that a guinea egg is pretty thick compared to a chicken egg. Does that influence the incubation at all? Do you need more humidity for a duck or a goose, John?
John Metzer: You know what we’re doing now is we’re actually just turning the humidity off during the incubation. And we’re using the humidity generated by the bird itself or the shell, the egg itself. So as with Stephen, we single stage incubate. [00:08:00] So one machine only has one set of eggs in it. And we follow a profile, a temperature profile we start out much higher with duck eggs, 100. 4 and then during hatching, we’re down at about 98.
But we, we do that with guinea eggs also, but I think a lot of hobbyists are single stage incubating. They don’t realize it. They, they get an incubator, they fill it with eggs. And those eggs are the only ones in there. I think that’s fairly common, and they don’t realize, Hey, I’m single stage incubating here, just like the large commercial hatcheries.
And so, we do have on our website the temperatures and humidity for single stage.
Single Stage Incubation vs Multistage Incubation
Kenny Coogan: Stephen, can you tell me what the opposite of a single stage is?
Stephen Horst: Commercial hatcheries would multistage if they have producing eggs every week. [00:09:00] So, they put multiple sets in. So, for us guineas, they take four weeks to hatch. So, we may have up to four different ages of eggs in an incubator at one time. In that case, you would keep a constant temperature and humidity the whole way through, kind of averaging the temperature and humidity of what you would if you’d single stage. So again, single stage, we start the temperature out higher and drop it about a degree, but in essence, what’s happening, we’re trying to keep that egg the same temperature throughout. So when an egg comes in, it’s cool and producing no heat.
So that’s why we have the incubator temperature higher. And then as it develops, the chick will start developing and actually start producing heat. And that’s why you want the incubator temperature slightly lower. So it’s not that we’re actually trying to change the temperature of the egg, [00:10:00] but we’re trying to keep the temperature of the egg, even the whole way through the incubation period, which is why we actually have to vary the incubator temperature because at the beginning it’s heating and at the end it’s cooling.
Kenny Coogan: For guineas, they’re laying a single clutch, and you can wait for like the clutch to be done, and you can just store them on your back porch, and then you put them all in the incubator at the same time?
Stephen Horst: You could, you can do that, yeah. They recommend not to store them over seven days, but you can store them up to 14 days, but the longer you keep them, they really start tapering off in fertility.
Guinea eggs you can store at a lot warmer temperatures than you can duck eggs chicken eggs. We store them around 67 degrees. We keep humidity a little bit higher too. You don’t want them to lose moisture as you’re storing them, [00:11:00] but yeah, you can store them up to seven days, no problem.
John Metzer: And John, how long can you store duck and geese eggs before you put them in the incubator?
It’s about the same seven days is typical, and maybe that’s just because that’s the length of a week. I don’t know if God figured out, let’s, let’s make the ideal holding time the same as what they’re going to develop as a week. But yeah, because normally people set eggs once a week, they figure, well, let’s just set them once a week and that’ll work.
John Metzer: But Stephen is correct that the longer you hold them. The more loss you’re going to have during the incubation.
Kenny Coogan: And even though we have tiny Bantam ducks all the way up to huge Jumbo Pekins, storing the eggs, incubation, they’re all pretty much similar?
John Metzer: Similar, but you do have some variability. We set our eggs we probably [00:12:00] set four different times. If we want to, let’s say, pull our hatch, take them out of the hatcher on Monday morning we’ll be setting some eggs, some breeds first thing Monday morning, some in the afternoon, some in the evening, and mallards would be the next day. So, you know, a hatchery wants everything to hatch at the same time. And so you set different setting times depending on sort of the size of the egg and the breed.
Turning Duck and Geese Eggs
Kenny Coogan: And John, can you talk about turning of the duck and the geese eggs? I think a lot of people are familiar with turning chicken eggs.
John Metzer: Yeah, it’s, it’s similar. Most commercial incubators turn every hour. We’ve been told that every two hours is fine. When I say we’ve been told and that’s by the incubator manufacturer. I believe the first week is the most important to turn. I don’t know what Stephen’s experiences [00:13:00] are, but if you’re hand turning, do it as much as you can the first week, and then if you have to back off so that people will accept you in the house, then, then do it less starting at about seven days.
So that, that’s what’s turning, but in commercial machines. You can do it as frequently as you want, but there’s no point in going to every 30 minutes because you’re just wearing out your turning mechanism and you’re not helping the egg any. And there’s always potential damage by turning, whether you’re doing it by hand or by machine.
And when I’m saying potential damage, things break, things don’t happen just right all the time.
Stephen Horst: Yeah, our machines turn every hour, but you can go every two hours, it’s fine. But, again, what John said at the beginning is more important to turn so they develop properly, and then it’s less critical at the end. So, if you’re [00:14:00] turning them by hand, I don’t have experience with that. So, our machines turn every hour.
Kenny Coogan: And same with you’re ducks and you’re brown Chinese.
Stephen Horst: Yes. Yep.
Candling Eggs
Kenny Coogan: I can’t imagine somebody waking up every two hours for the first seven days overnight to be turning their eggs. Stephen, on a commercial scale, do you candle your eggs, or how do you know if an egg is good or not?
Stephen Horst: Yeah, with, you can candle at 21 days, obviously. You’ll see the embryo develop. But, we wait until we transfer the eggs from the incubator to the hatcher when we candle them.
We have a table candler where our egg trays are 150 eggs. I made a table that has an LED for each egg. And it just has a little hole that lets light up, so we do it in a dark room. And we do a whole tray of 150 eggs at a time. [00:15:00] So, we pick out the clear ones, the ones that glow orange.
Sometimes you can see dead embryos. With the guinea eggs, they’re a little bit darker shell and a little thicker. So they’re a little bit harder to see the dead embryos sometimes. But so yeah, we would do it at day 24, day 25 when we transfer to the hatcher.
Kenny Coogan: And John, are you doing the same thing?
Mark Your Eggs to Ensure They Rotate Properly
John Metzer: Yeah, and back to turning because that’s when I sort of dropped out I wanted to add a point for people doing turning themselves or more importantly if they have an automatic turner to mark the eggs so that you really know they’re being turned you don’t want to rely on it and not check it just to make sure so there’s different ways of, you know, in a large commercial actually they’ll put a counter on it so it’s physically counting when it’s turning is one way to do it. Or you, you mark the eggs or you make [00:16:00] a mental note that, Hey, they’re facing forward this time. And next time they’re facing backwards. So however people do it, don’t rely on your automatic turner, just verify, trust, but verify.
Kenny Coogan: Are you allowed to use a Sharpie or a sticker, or do we not want to cover up the pores of the shell?
John Metzer: You know, it’s it’s said not to use a felt pen or wax specifically. So we definitely don’t use the wax pencils. I think the best is just a lead in pencil. So I, I don’t have any real proof one way or the other.
But if somebody’s doing something, I would use probably a pen or a sharp pencil, not a wax pencil.
Kenny Coogan: John, we were talking about how do you candle eggs at a commercial scale.
John Metzer: Ours are very similar we set them over a tray. We take out the obviously clear eggs first, [00:17:00] and then we actually have a very small handheld LED flashlight, even though it’s only two inches long and about a half inch wide, and they quickly go through and check the remainder of the eggs. To, to get those that may have started develop, but died.
We find it the easiest for us to do it at about nine days of age. But we did switch to a week later, about 16 days of age, because we felt, or the incubator manufacturer Jamesway felt that we should not be opening the incubator that soon.
So one thing that is unique about single stage is that you want your carbon dioxide levels very high, at least with ducks and geese during incubation. So the air that we’re breathing right now is 700 parts per million CO2. Well, during incubation. It doesn’t hurt ’em at least ducks to get up to [00:18:00] 10, 000.
So you’re with that 40 times the CO2 level during early incubation. So the only way you’re going to achieve that is to make sure your incubator is closed. And then even though those few small cells start to develop, they give off CO2. And so eventually up to 10 days of age that CO2 starts to build up. So that’s why I indicated earlier, when I set a machine, that you can close up so.
Kenny Coogan: So the egg shell is porous, and the little embryos are respiring, so they’re releasing, yeah, they’re releasing carbon dioxide. And do we know the benefit of having a high amount of carbon dioxide in the environment?
John Metzer: It’s actually makes the birds healthier when they hatch and you do get a better hatch. And interestingly for large commercial hatcheries that are hatching broiler chicks if [00:19:00] they have high carbon dioxide early in incubation, their feed efficiency is better when they grow those for meat.
Now, the way I rationalize it, and I don’t know if this is true or even close to it, but with a high CO2 level, I perceive that the cardiovascular system, the heart and the lungs, are being forced to work a little harder, and so maybe they’re developing a little sooner than they would if oxygen was very plentiful.
So, Stephen, you can correct me. That’s the way I rationalize it.
Stephen Horst: I dunno what the benefits of having the CO but we do the same thing. We have a CO2 in our new machines now that monitors that. So yeah, we keep our incubators closed. The bench completely closed until day 14.
And then I run them automatically depending on where the CO level is. So we run [00:20:00] it up to 60, it can get up to 90 before it kills them. They don’t recommend going that high, but same thing with the hatcher, we keep it as close as we can and then open it during the hatch to allow them to keep the humidity.
The humidity still spikes during hatch up to 90, 95 percent just from the moisture from hatching. But yeah, same thing with, I can’t explain why it’s better to do it that way, but I do know keeping the incubator closed the heat that you retain from the eggs, it is basically, the machine’s not even working, so it’s not adding humidity, and it’s not adding heat. They’re pretty much incubating themselves, so there’s less input that way, so it does definitely seem to work better.
John Metzer: Yeah, initially, I think, multi stage incubators, people would put eggs in every week, and I think the biggest benefit they thought they were having, was [00:21:00] that those eggs that are in the last part of development are putting off heat and that heat can be utilized to warm those eggs that are less than a week old because they’re not generating much heat.
And so you’re utilizing the energy, the heat in that machine, the best and that’s true because with single stage, you’re using more energy to heat them, and then at the end, you’re using energy to cool them. But, your hatchability is better, and the resulting birds are better. So, and remember that Mother Nature does single stage.
Incubator Size
Kenny Coogan: I don’t know if you can speak on this, but for the hobbyist, is it better to have a big incubator that holds 30 eggs if you only have 10 eggs? Or is it better to have a 10 egg incubator if you have 10 eggs, like are you really like wasting electricity heating that air or is it not enough [00:22:00] CO2? Do you have any thoughts on that, John?
John Metzer: My initial thought would be if cost is not a concern, have a 30 because that allows you to grow. I, you know, I’m a science kind of biology kind of guy and so I’d want to see some proof. I understand what you’re saying. It’d be a little, take longer to raise the CO2, et cetera, et cetera. But they do want in large commercial incubators if you’re not full of eggs, they want you to at least put the racks in there so that the airflow is still sort of going where it should go. Because, you know, when you have 10, incubator, the flow of air is really important. Now, how important that is in a smaller incubator, probably much less so because you don’t have the chance of generating quite as much heat.
But if I did have 10 eggs in [00:23:00] a 30 egg incubator, I’d probably want to spread them out in that incubator and not have them all in one. That’s that’s my only initial thoughts. I don’t know what Stephen considers with his machines
Stephen Horst: With the big machine, they run more efficiently when you have them full versus half empty. So, I suppose that would be the same with the hobbyist incubator. It’d be better if you have a, have a full incubator and not just be running a few eggs, but it can be done. It just might take more input. At the beginning, it might take, be taking more heat. And then, which would drop the humidity maybe, depends how the heater is set up, and you have to be adding more humidity, so I think both would work.
John Metzer: One thing about the larger commercial incubators and hatchers is that they have a cooling system, whereas a smaller hobbyist incubator, the only way you [00:24:00] cool it is to open it up to let more air go through. Whereas a commercial incubator, there’s cooling coils, like a radiator, but with cold water. To cool the machine off.
Kenny Coogan: We are going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. And when we return, we’ll be focusing on the final days of the hatching process.
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Final Days of Incubating
Kenny Coogan: And we’re back with John Metzer and Stephen [00:25:00] Horst.
The last couple of questions, we’re going to be talking about the final days of the hatching process. John, duck eggs take 28 days. So, around day 25, 26, are we doing something different?
John Metzer: Well, we’re putting them in a different machine. And really the machines are very similar. I’ve used incubators for hatching, at least with ours.
But in hatching, basically you’re not turning them, and typically you want the humidity to elevate so that the birds can hatch. So, the main thing is that they’re not being turned.
Kenny Coogan: What humidity level do you want for the last few days?
John Metzer: Well, in not relative humidity, but wet bulb, you’re at 90 percent or more.
Kenny Coogan: And Stephen, what about guinea eggs? What day do you stop turning? [00:26:00]
Stephen Horst: So a transfer day, 24 is what they recommend. We actually do 25. But we start ramping up the humidity a little bit before we transfer them to the hatcher. And we aim to do 77 percent right away. And with guineas, again, with their harder shells, we want to make sure they don’t dry out.
If they’re too dry, they can’t pick, they basically have to turn 360 degrees in their shelves, pick around the top. So, another thing with guineas that’s different they like to hear each other. There are some people that actually turn their machines off and let the CO really spike. I don’t know if it’s the spike in carbon dioxide or the ability to hear themselves piping or hear the others piping that stimulates them to hatch, but that does work better.
So the less noise you have, the better. We actually dialed back [00:27:00] our machines, slowed down the fans. There’s still enough circulation, but they need a little bit more quiet, so either intermittent running your machine or I know that can get dangerous. I don’t maybe recommend that for obvious, but be concerned about the noise level of your machine.
And then as far as breaking them out I know that was a question that some people have, should you help them out with guineas? The answer is actually yes, but after they’re all done hatching and you, as you get more experience with them, you can tell if, if they get stuck, especially because they have a hard shell.
Some do get stuck. They’re completely healthy, develop fine. But after they’re done hatching, you can break them out and you know, you’re breaking them out too soon if the membrane has blood veins in it yet, it should be clear or white the membrane, if you’re helping him out, if you see [00:28:00] blood, then they’re still hatching. Just let them go. But because they take longer to develop than chickens your humidity and temperature has to be just right. If their humidity is too low, they’re going to stick and they can’t turn to hatch. If it’s too high, they’re going to not develop right and you’ll, you’ll smell it.
It’ll, it’ll be a stinky hatch. So those are the things that could go wrong with hatching guineas.
Kenny Coogan: So Stephen, you have like a clutch of 20 guinea chicks hatching, and then you notice that 19 of them are running around the brooder and then one of them, the shell is still stuck to them. Is that what you’re referring to?
Stephen Horst: No, I’m saying they can’t get out of the shell. So you can help them, but don’t help them too soon. When we’re done with the hatch, we actually even during the pull day, we’ll help them out. If it looks like they’re stuck and you, you [00:29:00] have to develop an eye for that, you know if it’s too soon to help them out or not, and then the final hatch days on the delivery day will actually go through and, and, and break them out again ones that are still hatching or got stuck. So do that twice.
John Metzer: Yeah, and ducks are very similar to that. Sort of our rule of thumb is if the duckling has started to turn in there then it’s typically fairly safe to help them out if you have to. But sometimes they just make a hole and they just make that hole bigger and bigger and they’re not turning in there.
You’re not going to have much luck with those, but sometimes they will start to have, they turn, peck, turn, peck, turn, peck, and then something happens. Typically, if they’ve started that process, you can help them out if you have to.
Twice we have had to transfer eggs for over three hours drive time from an incubator [00:30:00] to a hatcher, so we think they’re very tender, but at that age, at least they handled it very well. We had as good a hatch after the transportation is before.
So I just thought I’d throw that in there that if something goes wrong in somebody’s incubator, it may not be the end of the world. Overheating is much worse than cooling, but don’t give up, just keep incubating and candle them and see if they’ve made it
Kenny Coogan: So that’s the back end of the incubation. In the beginning I don’t know if your facilities do this, but I do know some people ship fertilized eggs, but that needs to happen within the first seven days.
John Metzer: Well, the fresher the eggs, the better, because during shipping, you’re using up time. So when we ship hatching eggs, we try to ship eggs that are only a day or two old, three days at the most. So when the customer receives them, they’re within the seven days and they [00:31:00] can set them. Yes, whether they’re being shipped or produced on your own place, it’s best to incubate, put them in incubator within seven days.
John or Stephen, any final words of hope for our listeners who want to incubate ducks, geese, and guineas at home.
Don’t despair if something goes wrong. Just let the machine keep going, candle the eggs in two or three days, and you’ll find out then if the problem really did harm the birds. Don’t, don’t panic. Just get it back to normal and go from there. And it’s better if they get too cool than too hot. You go up two degrees, that’ll kill them. Two degrees down is no problem for a short period of time. It’s a wonderful experience for a lot of people.
Kenny Coogan: Stephen?
Stephen Horst: Yeah, I would say the same thing. It’s just keep track of the days, temperature, humidity.
Don’t get too eager to Break them out, especially with [00:32:00] guineas, if you think they’re getting stuck just let them go and, yeah, let them have time to turn, it might take a while for them to come out, but they, they’re pretty hardy, they come out, it looks like their shells are really hard and they’re never going to make it, that you really should do them a favor in helping them, but don’t help them too soon, so, yeah, they’ll, they’ll come.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, John Metzer from Metzer Farms and Stephen Horst from Fifth Day Farm for this great conversation.
Stephen Horst: Thank you, John and Kenny. Yep. Thank you very much.
Jessica Anderson: Thanks again to Brinsea, our sponsor for this Mother Earth News and Friends podcast episode. You too can experience the Brinsea difference and maximize your hatch rates with Brinsea incubators that monitor temperature and humidity and are made of antimicrobial materials.
Brinsea ships worldwide and provides stellar customer support to answer [00:33:00] all your questions. Hatch your chicks with Brinsea, the leader in innovative incubation research. Learn more at Brinsea.com. Again, that’s www.Brinsea.com
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
Jessica Anderson: Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
