Breeding pens, incubating and hatching

Flocks → Breeding & hatching.

1. Add a breeding pen: the hens and rooster (or ducks and drake, geese and gander, hens and tom) you're hatching from. Turkeys: Broad Breasted birds can't mate naturally, so their eggs are infertile without artificial insemination — hatch from heritage breeds like Bourbon Red or Narragansett.
2. Set eggs from a pen or a flock, with the incubator. ProvenFarm sets the candling, lockdown and hatch dates: 21 days for chickens, 28 for ducks and turkeys (35 for Muscovy ducks — put Muscovy in the pen's breed), 30 for geese, 17 for Coturnix quail (23 for Bobwhites), 27 for guinea fowl, 23–24 for pheasants, chukars and partridges and 28 for peafowl — put the bird in the pen's breed so ProvenFarm knows. Each pen also checks its males against its females (about 8–12 hens per rooster, 4–6 ducks per drake, 2–4 geese per gander, 4–8 turkey hens per tom, 3–5 quail hens per male). The form shows the incubator humidity for the species; duck and goose eggs also need cooling and a light misting each day from day 10.
3. On candling day, record how many are clear (infertile), stopped developing and still developing.
4. On hatch day, tap Record hatch: how many chicks, ducklings, goslings, poults or keets hatched. They start a new flock with its own name and purpose — and for organic, the hatch record is the flock's origin record, so there's no hatchery invoice to attach.

You're reminded on candling, lockdown and hatch days. Past hatches show fertility and hatch rate for each pen.