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Incubation: Basic Requirements

The Nursery

The nursery is a separate anatomic entity of the closed aviary, which originates from the breeding aviary. Within the nursery is housed and incubated the highest concentration of avian life and the greatest risk of loss due to mechanical failure, human error, infectious disease or combinations of these three factors. The eggs and offspring in the nursery represent the yield of financial investment, hard work, time, knowledge and avicultural abilities of the owner. The potential impact of losses in the nursery can be devastating both emotionally and financially to the aviculturist. For the attending veterinarian serving the needs of the producing aviculturist, an acute and specific awareness of relative risk, financial investments and emotional status of their clients will most definitely have a role in their success.

Records

At the time of entry to the nursery, all eggs or chicks should have an individual record initiated and assigned. Closed banding is recommended as the most popular form of permanent identification, although microchip implantation may also be used in older chicks or some precocial chicks such as the ratite species. Eggs may be identified with pencil coding on their shells. Obviously, newly hatched chicks are not banded at that age, and care must be taken to maintain the identification of those chicks until they are large enough to be permanently identified.

Specific areas of value for hand feeding psittacine bird records should potentially include:

* Identification
* Species
* Parentage
* Date of hatch
* Date that hand feeding was initiated
* Formula being used
* Day of age
* Weight
* Volume fed
* Frequency of feedings
* Comments

Artificial Incubation

Incubator room design

In those facilities that maintain separate incubation and nursery areas, a general floor plan should be established for the incubation area. This floor plan should allow a specific traffic pattern to be used to promote the efficient use of time and materials and also serve as a passive barrier to waste and contamination. The so called "spaghetti test" is a helpful aid toward establishing a fluid floor plan. By tracing the daily activity that will occur within a building for normal work tasks, the amount of overlapping and inefficiency of motion will become evident in a floor plan/entire facility analysis. If the projected foot traffic begins to resemble a "spaghetti ball", the relative risk of cross contamination and motion/time inefficiency should dictate a change in blueprints.

Traffic

A key consideration throughout the entire incubation process is traffic flow. Minimized traffic, particularly in the high risk areas such as the incubation and hatching rooms will allow for lower infectious disease risk as well as lower stress to the eggs and chicks. Controlled and minimized introduction of potential infectious pathogens into the room and incubator / hatcher is of key importance. Careful thought is strongly recommended regarding how people, the eggs, visitors, etc are moving into and within the designated incubation area.

Egg storage

Most psittacine aviculturists will set eggs into the incubator on the same day that the egg is harvested from the nest. In part, this procedure originates from less knowledge about the specific date of lay, and this is a reality to a certain degree with psittacine aviculture. If the eggs are not yet set by the parents, and incubation has not started embryogenesis significantly, storage can be utilized to synchronize hatch groups. Once incubation has started either naturally or artificially, the eggs should not be cooled, as there is significant risk of embryonic mortality if the egg is warmed, cooled and then warmed again in that manner. Eggs should be stored ideally at approximately 59 degrees Farenheight until they are set into the incubator. During the initial period of egg cooling in storage or in the nest, the air cell develops from the separation of the inner and outer shell membranes. Minimal movement or vibrations of the eggs during both storage and incubation is important, as handling during storage and the initial aspects of development during early incubation can predispose to early embryonic mortality as well as malpositions.

Incubation

The three key factors that need to be simulated in an artificial environment for incubation are temperature, humidity and turning of the eggs. It is mandatory that all of these three factors be provided consistently by the incubator. Successful artificial incubation requires total commitment of attention to the details of record keeping, care and monitoring of the equipment, egg handling technique and brooder management. There are numerous testimonials available regarding specific incubator manufacturer choices, settings and techniques used. However.....Many of these testimonials are exactly opposite of each other!

It is very important for the operator of an incubator to listen to these testimonials and carefully try to separate fact from fiction.

The same goes for their attending veterinarian.

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