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An incubator is a device simulating avian incubation by keeping eggs warm at a particular temperature range and in the correct humidity with a turning mechanism to hatch them.
The common names of the incubator in other terms include breeding / hatching machines or hatchers, setters, and egg breeding / equipment. [1]
The Egyptians had a method of incubating in 400 BC, using a cylindrical building or oven that had a fire at the bottom. The eggs that were incubating were placed on an inverted cone that was partially covered in ash. The eggs were placed in a woven basket that sat on top of the ashes. The building also had a roof that allowed smoke to escape, but it kept the rain out. [2] Egyptian egg ovens are typically brick structures in a pyramidal shape, with two internal chambers. [3]
Controlled scientific incubation required the accurate and repeatable measurement of temperature, such as the alcohol-based thermometer proposed by the French naturalist and scientist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur in 1730, [4] and the temperature scale named after him.
Réaumur used the thermometer in his design for an artificial incubator, presented to the Académie des sciences in 1747, and published in 1749 as l’Art de faire éclore et d'élever en toute saison des oiseaux domestiques de toutes espèces, soit par le moyen de la chaleur du fumier, soit par le moyen de celle du feu ordinaire, or "The art of hatching and rearing domestic birds of all species in all seasons, either by means of the heat of manure or by means of ordinary fire".
Lyman Byce created a coal lamp incubator in 1879. [5] The first commercial machine was made by Hearson in the year of 1881. [6]
Ira M. Petersime of Gettysburg, Ohio, USA is credited with inventing the electric egg incubator in 1922. [7] Shortly thereafter he and his son, Ray, began manufacturing the incubators. [8] They were granted numerous patents on design features and subsequent improvements. 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. The incubator is recorded being used to hatch bird and reptile eggs. It lets the fetus inside the egg grow without the mother needing to be present to provide the warmth. Chicken eggs are recorded to hatch after about 21 days, but other species of birds can take a longer or shorter amount of time. [10] Incubators are also used to raise birds. [11]
An incubator should be able to set the perfect environment and condition for an egg to incubate because it regulates the factors such as temperature, humidity, and turning the eggs when necessary, so the egg is incubated properly because it plays the role of the hen in its natural state. The incubator also allows the egg to incubate while eliminating the external threats that could possibly harm the eggs. [1]
The modern hatchery manager's goal is to produce large numbers of uniform, robust, day-old chicks. 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. [12] Incubating different species of birds at the same time is possible within the same incubator.
In industrial incubation, there are two common used methods of incubation: single-stage and multi-stage. In single-stage incubation, the incubator contains only eggs of the same embryonic age. The advantage of single-stage incubation is that climate conditions can be adjusted according to the needs of all the growing embryo. In multi-stage incubation the setter contains eggs of different embryonic ages, usually 3 to 6 age groups. [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. [14] In a multi-stage incubation procedure, the heat produced by the older embryos is used to heat the warmth-demanding younger embryos in the same machine. Due to different physical demand in Multi-Stage and Single-stage different equipment is needed to be successful. Many industrial producers use traditional Single-Stage machines, but REAL Single-stage is available. [13]
Modern incubators are electrically heated, controlled by a thermostat while some are powered by solar energy due to epileptic and erratic electricity supply. 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. Some industrial incubators are large enough to hold up to 124,416 eggs, and some other styles can only hold a few eggs. [12]
The styles of incubators include:
The chicken is a domesticated species that arose from the red junglefowl, originally from India. They have also partially hybridized with other wild species of junglefowl. Rooster and cock are terms for adult male birds, and a younger male may be called a cockerel. A male that has been castrated is a capon. An adult female bird is called a hen, and a sexually immature female is called a pullet. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food or as pets. Traditionally, they were also bred for cockfighting, which is still practiced in some places. Chickens domesticated for meat are broilers, and for eggs, they are layers.
The megapodes, also known as incubator birds or mound-builders, are stocky, medium-large, chicken-like birds with small heads and large feet in the family Megapodiidae. Their name literally means "large foot" and is a reference to the heavy legs and feet typical of these terrestrial birds. All are browsers, and all but the malleefowl occupy wooded habitats. Most are brown or black in color. Megapodes are superprecocial, hatching from their eggs in the most mature condition of any bird. They hatch with open eyes, bodily coordination and strength, full wing feathers, and downy body feathers, and are able to run, pursue prey, and in some species, fly on the same day they hatch.
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches.
The word incubation may refer to:
Egg incubation is the process by which an egg, of oviparous (egg-laying) animals, develops an embryo within the egg, after the egg's formation and ovipositional release. Egg incubation is done under favorable environmental conditions, possibly by brooding and hatching the egg.
Balut is a fertilized developing egg embryo that is boiled or steamed and eaten from the shell. It is commonly sold as street food most notably in the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. The term comes from the Filipino language.
A hatchery is a facility where eggs are hatched under artificial conditions, especially those of fish, poultry or even turtles. It may be used for ex-situ conservation purposes, i.e. to breed rare or endangered species under controlled conditions; alternatively, it may be for economic reasons.
An incubator is a device used to grow and maintain microbiological cultures or cell cultures. The incubator maintains optimal temperature, humidity and other conditions such as the CO2 and oxygen content of the atmosphere inside. Incubators are essential for much experimental work in cell biology, microbiology and molecular biology and are used to culture both bacterial and eukaryotic cells.
The black tree monitor or Beccari's monitor is a species of lizard in the family Varanidae. The species is a relatively small member of the family, growing to about 90–120 cm (35–47 in) in total length. V. beccarii is endemic to the Aru Islands off New Guinea, living in an arboreal habitat. The skin color of adults is completely black, to which one common name refers.
In developmental biology, the Hamburger–Hamilton stages (HH) are a series of 46 chronological stages in chick development, starting from laying of the egg and ending with a newly hatched chick. It is named for its creators, Viktor Hamburger and Howard L. Hamilton.
The eastern three-lined skink, also known commonly as the bold-striped cool-skink, is a species of skink, a lizard in the family Scincidae. The species is endemic to Australia. A. duperreyi has been extensively studied in the context of understanding the evolution of learning, viviparity in lizards, and temperature- and genetic-sex determination. A. duperreyi is classified as a species of "Least Concern" by the IUCN.
The Chorioallantoic Membrane (CAM), also known as the chorioallantois, is a highly vascularized membrane found in the eggs of certain amniotes like birds and reptiles. It is formed by the fusion of the mesodermal layers of two extra-embryonic membranes – the chorion and the allantois. It is the avian homologue of the mammalian placenta. It is the outermost extra-embryonic membrane which lines the non-vascular egg shell membrane.
In biology, kleptothermy is any form of thermoregulation by which an animal shares in the metabolic thermogenesis of another animal. It may or may not be reciprocal, and occurs in both endotherms and ectotherms. One of its forms is huddling. However, kleptothermy can happen between different species that share the same habitat, and can also happen in pre-hatching life where embryos are able to detect thermal changes in the environment.
Embryo culture is a component of in vitro fertilisation where in resultant embryos are allowed to grow for some time in an artificial medium.
An Egyptian egg oven or Egyptian mamal is an oven for hatching eggs by incubation using artificial heat. Manmade hatching ovens in Egypt date back to the 4th century BC. Although using old processing methods, they were considered effective at hatching chickens, especially in comparison to other techniques of the time.
Brine shrimp have the ability to produce dormant eggs, known as cysts. This has led to the extensive use of brine shrimp in aquaculture. The cysts may be stored for long periods and hatched on demand to provide a convenient form of live feed for larval fish and crustaceans.
Broodiness is the action or behavioral tendency to sit on a clutch of eggs to incubate them, often requiring the non-expression of many other behaviors including feeding and drinking. Being broody has been defined as "Being in a state of readiness to brood eggs that is characterized by cessation of laying and by marked changes in behavior and physiology".. Broodiness is usually associated with female birds, although males of some bird species become broody and some non-avian animals also show broodiness.
The broiler industry is the process by which broiler chickens are reared and prepared for meat consumption. Worldwide, in 2005 production was 71,851,000 tonnes. From 1985 to 2005, the broiler industry grew by 158%.
The horsehair crab, Erimacrus isenbeckii, is a species of crab which is found mainly in the Northwest Pacific, around the Hokkaido coast in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Western Bering Sea and is an important commercial species used in Japanese cuisine. Despite the importance of the species, biological studies are usually specialized and limited. The catch for the species reached a peak in the 1950s at 27,000 tons and has decreased since, reaching 2,000 tons in 2003. Due to the commercial importance of the species, many stock enhancement programs have been utilized to help maintain a successful fishery. The species is commonly found on sandy benthic environments from shallow water to depths of up to 350 meters.
The West Coast Wildlife Centre is a kiwi-rearing facility in Franz Josef, New Zealand. A public-private partnership with the Department of Conservation and Te Rūnunga o Makaawhio of Ngāi Tahu, it hatches eggs of the kiwi species rowi and Haast tokoeka retrieved from the wild. It rears the chicks until they are large enough for transfer to outdoor enclosures as part of Operation Nest Egg. More than 50 per cent of all living rowi were hatched at the Wildlife Centre. It is also a tourist attraction with several captive tuatara, museum displays, and tours of the rearing facility.
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