How to Choose the Right Egg Incubator Size for Your Farm

The most common mistake we see when someone buys their first incubator is choosing by flock size instead of by batch size. Your incubator does not care how many hens you own. It cares how many fertile eggs you can set at the same time.

Start from the chicks you want

Not every egg hatches. Even a well-run hatch loses some eggs to infertility or early embryo death, so plan to set roughly a quarter to a third more eggs than the number of chicks you want. If you want 100 chicks from a batch, plan on setting about 130 eggs.

Match that number to a machine

• Up to about 50 chicks per batch: a 64-egg or 68-egg AC/DC incubator is enough.
• About 100 chicks per batch: a 128-egg or 136-egg AC/DC incubator is the usual choice.
• About 150 to 200 chicks per batch: the 204-egg AC/DC or the 272-egg roller-type.
• A hatching business selling chicks every cycle: our commercial range starts at 352 eggs and goes past 2,000.

Can you actually fill it?

Eggs set together should be no more than about a week old. A big machine therefore needs a big, steady supply of fresh fertile eggs, from your own flock or a supplier you trust. A half-empty machine still works, but you are paying for capacity you are not using.

If you are growing, go one step up

If your flock or your customer list is clearly growing, buy one size above what you need today. Outgrowing an incubator in six months is more expensive than buying the next size up now.

Two smaller machines can beat one big one

Two 128-egg machines, loaded a week apart, give you chicks every week instead of every three weeks. If one machine develops a fault, you have not lost everything. For a small hatching business this is often the safer plan.

Think about power

If your area has regular outages, choose an AC/DC model whatever the size. See our post on AC versus DC incubators for how dual power works.

See the actual prices

Our Products page lists every model with its price, and the incubator finder on the home page suggests a size from your batch number. If you are between two sizes, call us and tell us your plans. We would rather recommend the right machine than the biggest one.