Hatching eggs in an incubator at home is one of the most addictive parts of the backyard farming hobby. There are few things more satisfying than watching new life spring forth from the eggs you’ve been carefully incubating for weeks. One type of bird you can hatch and raise yourself is emus. Emus are an intimidating bird for the farm, but they have many uses. In this article, we’re going to talk about how to hatch emu eggs in an incubator at home.
If you’re just getting started and need an incubator for your emu eggs, the GQF Genesis Hova-Bator is a solid option. It is large enough to contain around 4-6 emu eggs and, in my experience, has an accurate digital thermometer. I’ve hatched quite a few eggs in this model of incubator and have always had a good experience.
Why have emus on the farm?
If you have a homestead with adequate space, you might be looking at adding emus to your farm. They are an all-around difficult bird to try to keep – they are large, at times unpredictable, and they take up quite a bit of space. Unless you’re a pretty hardcore homesteader who has done a ton of research and met these birds in person, I would not recommend you try to raise them.
If you are confident in your ability to raise emus, there are some benefits to having them. Emus can be an entertaining animal to have on the farm, their antics will provide hours of entertainment. They also have financial benefits for the homesteader, as many parts of the animal can be sold, including the feathers, oil, meat, eggs, and leather. A fertilized emu egg can be sold for over $100.
Why hatch your own emus?
Emus are large birds that can be very challenging to handle, especially if you purchase one as an already grown adult. Without any knowledge of how they were raised, it can be difficult to judge their temperament. Emus that you hatch yourself can be more docile and easy to handle because you had the opportunity to raise them yourself. They’ll be familiar with you and a bit more predictable as a result.
Incubating Emu Eggs – The Basics
If you want to have good success with incubating your emu eggs, you must have the basics down before anything else. So let’s talk about the basics of incubating emu eggs:
- Incubation time: 50-60 days
- Incubator temperature: 36.3°C (97.5°F)
- Incubator humidity: 30%
- Egg turning: 4 times a day
- Candling eggs: Not possible
- Lockdown Date: Day 40
- Lockdown temperature: 36.3°C (97.5°F)
- Lockdown humidity: 30%
Incubating emu eggs is an exercise in patience. Emu chicks will hatch after about 50-60 days of incubation. Different breeders tend to report different average hatch times, with some saying 49 days, 52 days, 56 days, and 60 days. Once day 45 comes, you’ll want to start checking the incubator daily. Sometimes they can pop out earlier, sometimes later. It just depends on the egg! You’ll find that some clutches of eggs will hatch at about the same time and others will hatch days apart.
Your eggs will need to be consistently incubated at 36.3°C (97.5°F) up until about 10-15 days before hatching. During the final days of incubation, the humidity is increased. Unlike chickens or ducks, your incubator temperature does not need to be reduced for emus.
Candling your emu eggs is pretty much not a possibility due to the opaque nature of their shells
How to hatch emu eggs
I’ve hatched dozens of batches of eggs in my life. There is some advice online that is spot on and some that is not. Be cautious of reading forums where people discuss egg hatching tips. It really boils down to making sure your fundamentals are rock solid and being patient – allowing nature to take its course. In this section of the article, we’ll go over everything (and I mean everything!) that you need to know about incubating emu eggs successfully.
Selecting quality emu eggs to hatch
How do you select a quality emu egg to hatch? Where do you get fertile emu eggs? Picking the right eggs to hatch is the first and probably most important step in incubating eggs. Emu eggs aren’t usually sold in markets, but it’s worth advising that you don’t try to incubate supermarket eggs in general – they probably won’t hatch. Instead, look for a local, trusted seller of fertilized eggs. Find a farm that will allow you to see the flock of emus being bred for eggs. This will ensure that you’re getting what you’re paying for and that the birds are treated well.
You may also purchase fertilized emu eggs from the internet. Shipped emu eggs are incredibly expensive, can arrive damaged, and have a reduced hatch rate built-in due to trauma sustained during shipping. Emu eggs are also not the most common type of fertile egg made available online, so your buying options are limited
When you have your eggs in hand, carefully examine each egg. Be sure to wash your hands before and after handling the eggs every single time. Examine the eggs for any cracks or dents.
Never try to incubate an egg that’s cracked, dirty, too large, too small, misshapen, double-yolked, or unusual in any way.
Be aware of the approximate age of the eggs as well. 5 weeks after an emu egg is laid, it begins to rapidly lose fertility. Getting your eggs set in the incubator within 5 weeks of being laid is vital.
Letting your eggs settle
Once you’ve picked up your eggs, whether it’s from your local post office or from a local farm, you’re going to want to allow your eggs a minimum of 12 hours, though ideally more like 24 hours, to settle. Place them in the carton with the fat side of the egg pointed upward. This will allow the air cell at the fat end of the egg to settle into place before incubating.
Your eggs should be given plenty of time to reach room temperature. Putting colder eggs in an incubator can breed bacteria as the egg heats up, just like with food. Always start incubating an egg from room temperature.
How to clean an incubator
An incubator that has been contaminated by some kind of pathogen can put a swift end to any developing embryos in the eggs you set. You have to properly clean and sanitize your incubator before setting eggs, even if it’s a new incubator. This is my incubator cleaning protocol – so far it hasn’t steered me wrong.
- If you have used your incubator before, be sure that any pieces of shell or any other material left over from past hatches has been removed from the incubator. These small bits of egg matter can house and grow bacteria.
- Remove all of the removable components, like water pans and egg trays, and clean them with soap, water, and a sponge. After cleaning, you can further disinfect these components by soaking in warm water with a mild bleach. Don’t use chemical cleaners.
- Wipe down each of the components and allow to dry.
- Now, clean the bottom of the incubator by soaking it in a 25% bleach and warm water solution. Wipe it down with a soft cloth, particularly if you use a
- Gently clean the heating unit, but avoid getting it wet. A slightly damp cloth or a brush is the ideal way to clean the heating unit.
Once it’s been cleaned, allow it to sit in a protected spot for 12-24 hours. The incubator should be dry and should smell clean before you set eggs. If it has a funky odor, clean it again using the above protocol.
Setting up your incubator
Once your incubator has been disinfected, it’s time to get it set up. Never start your incubator and immediately set eggs. It’s not like cooking a frozen pizza in an oven that hasn’t been preheated yet! You want to make sure each of the fundamentals of incubating an emu egg is spot on. Don’t cut corners here – doing so can result in dead embryos, which would be a major disappointment given how expensive emu eggs are and how long they take to incubate. If your temperature is over a few degrees, your eggs will die and you’ll be in for a sad time. If it’s too low, it can impact development negatively. If the humidity is wrong, again, you can have chicks that don’t develop or hatch properly. Sad times all around.
48 hours before you begin incubating your emu eggs, set up the incubator and get all of its vital measurements stabilized. You’ll want to see that the temperature and humidity are stable for at least 12 hours before setting eggs. As a reminder, you will want these two readings to be perfect:
- Incubator temperature: 36.3°C (97.5°F)
- Incubator humidity: 30%
During the first few hours, you might find that the internal temperature and humidity fluctuate a bit. This is normal. If you see an incorrect reading consistently for more than an hour, adjust your incubator so it provides the correct reading. Once you are certain that your incubator is stable and ready for eggs, go ahead and set them.
Turning your emu eggs
In the wild, a mother emu sitting on her eggs is always busy rotating and turning her eggs. When incubating emu eggs, or any other type of egg, this action must be simulated by manually turning the eggs or using an automatic egg turner. Automatic egg turners are especially nice because you don’t run the risk of contaminating the inside of the incubator or the eggs themselves by touching them and you don’t run the risk of throwing off the internal temperature and humidity.
If you don’t have an automatic egg turner, it’s not the end of the world. You can turn your eggs by hand. Always wash your hands before touching your eggs! The oils and dirt on your hands can clog the pores in the shell or contaminate the eggs with bacteria. Either scenario can kill an embryo.
If turning manually by hand, before you set them, take a soft pencil and place an X on one side of the egg and an O on the opposite side of the egg. This will help you make sure each egg has been fully turned. You will continue your daily turning of the eggs until 4 days before hatching.
Candling emu eggs
Unfortunately, candling emu eggs isn’t really a possibility due to their dark, opaque shells. It is possible to check for development though. One of the things you can do is at about day 35, remove the eggs from the incubator and whistle to them. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes you can feel the chick start to move around inside the egg after hearing the whistle.
Incubator lockdown
We’ve touched on lockdown a few times in this article. Lockdown is the term given to the last 10-15 days of incubation. During lockdown, you remove the eggs from the egg turner and lay them on their side, and then leave them alone until they hatch. Fast facts about lockdown:
- Lockdown Date: Day 40
- Lockdown temperature: 36.3°C (97.5°F)
- Lockdown humidity: 30%
Once your lockdown is initiated, all there is to do is wait.
During these final days of incubation, your chicks will internally pip. This is the process where your chick will penetrate the air cell of the egg and begin breathing. 2 days before your chicks hatch, they will likely externally pip, where they crack the outside of the shell and begin breathing outside air.
During this period, the chick will begin absorbing the remaining yolk inside of the egg into their bodies. Chicks are able to survive on this yolk for a day or two after they hatch, at which point they begin to eat and drink.
The general rule of thumb is once you see a pip in the shell, which may appear like a crack or a bump, your chick should hatch within a day or two. As it prepares to hatch from the egg, it will slowly rotate, breaking the egg shell in a process called unzipping. This is the final stage of hatching. Once they have begun to unzip themselves, hatching is imminent. This part can be difficult for excited chick hatchers. It can be slow, but don’t interfere.
Note: If you get impatient and try to help a chick hatch, you may accidentally kill it. If the yolk isn’t fully absorbed and you pull the chick from the shell, this radically increases the odds that they will not survive.
The period of time from pip to zip can vary pretty widely. The eggs may not all hatch at once. Or they might. It really depends on a number of factors that are nearly impossible to account for. I’ve had hatches where every single egg hatches at the exact same time and somewhere chicks hatch a few days late. You just have to be patient.
The important thing is to be patient and not mess with the eggs. Hatching eggs can be taxing if you’re emotionally invested. Some eggs won’t pip and hatch. Some will internally pip but not externally pip. Some will externally pip but never unzip. Some will unzip but won’t be able to push out of their shell. Some will hatch and then die.
If you think a chick is struggling to hatch, don’t intervene. It sounds callous, but if a chick can’t hatch on its own, it means it wasn’t strong enough to do so. Some chicks are also slow hatchers. Intervening too early can kill them. Let nature take its course.
If you help a chick that can’t hatch on its own, any offspring they have may also be predisposed to having difficulty hatching. This is something to consider if you plan to continue breeding that line of emu.
How long do emu eggs take to hatch?
The length of time it takes an emu egg to hatch is generally about 50-60 days. There can be a good amount of variation though, as some eggs will hatch earlier than others.
Incubating emu eggs naturally
Incubating emu eggs naturally is also a viable option for you if you have a female that’s ready to sit. Emus are generally pretty reliable egg sitters, so if you have a hen ready to do it and you want chicks, let her do it! Your emu will gather a collection of eggs to sit on over the course of a few weeks. She won’t begin sitting on the eggs until she has laid her full clutch, so take care to keep these eggs safe. Once she has begun to sit on the eggs, the emu chicks will hatch after 50-60 days. You don’t need to do anything to help.
Common incubation problems
If you’ve gone through the process of incubating emu eggs and didn’t get many – or any – chicks, I understand that can be a difficult thing to experience, especially given the time and cost put into incubating emu eggs. You’ve been incubating your eggs for almost 2 months and have little to show for it. Now we troubleshoot. What are the more common causes of poor hatch rates?
- Setting old eggs
- Eggs with low fertility
- Improper turning
- Improper handling
- Uneven incubator temperature
- Uneven incubator humidity
- Nutritional deficiencies with the breeding stock
- Contaminated incubator
We hope this guide for incubating emu eggs helps you have a successful hatch!
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