Broody or Incubator?

Until very recently, I would always turn to the incubator rather than encourage one of my hens to go broody.  Even though my first ever hatch of chicks took place under a broody, I still liked (and at the same time feared) the control I had over the incubator.  I could set it when I wanted and didn't need to separate hens. I also felt the eating eggs were precious and worth much more.  I could check on the eggs as often as I liked through the clear top of the incubator and not have to risking being savaged by a broody hen.  So all in all it made total sense .............that was until I decided, very recently to check how much it costs to run my incubator and brooder/electric hen.  Now I see why breeders keep hens as broodies.

Here is the calculation and explanation:

In 2013 the average UK price for electricity was 17.2pence per Kwh (Kilowatt per hour)

A Kw is 1000 watts.

So with my incubator being 130w

130/1000 then multiplied by 17.2pence = 2.236 pence per hour.

Cheap right?  Well my incubator tends to run for 28 days, the set up, incubation of 21 days and then the drying off before transferring.

2.236 x 24 hours = 53.6 pence per day x 28 days = £15 per hatch.

Ouch.  I only set six eggs and just 3 hatched.

The six eggs cost me £15, so for 3 day old chicks it has cost me £30.  Most are sold for £5 that I see advertised and the cost above is before feed and running the brooder/electric hen.

Of course if I had filled the 25 egg capacity incubator the price per chick would be lower, but it does drive home how much it costs to hatch your own on a small scale. Andy Crawthay (@chickenstreet) has written about this a few times I believe.  But it was my calculations for raising some Ixworth birds as "table" birds that shone a great deal of light on the subject for me.

To make it worth while I would need to hatch at least 16 chicks.  Assuming less that 100% hatch rate, that's quite a few eggs.  If i were to buy them that would prove very expensive, so then you are into the realms of keeping a pair or trio for eggs to hatch.

Not wanting to bore anyone, I worked out with feed and other costs for the pair I would need to hatch 18 at a time to make it worth while running the incubator.

So with a couple of two year old gold lace wyandottes, one of which going broody, I will be trying to take advantage of their urge to have little chicks as often as I can.

Thanks for reading.