If you have bought eggs on ebay and then had a power failure, or the eggs are a too large for the incubator, or you have had poor hatch rates or had deformities of the feet when the chicks finally do hatch. Here is the best solution and the most beneficial method to hatch eggs purchased on eBay we have found.....keep a few broody Bantam hens around!

We have raised about a dozen "backyard" Bantams, no particular breed, and the hens are sitting on eggs all summer long. Our Bantams free range our 8 acres and never leave or bother neighbors, they can also be kept in a small Rubbermaid shed as a hen house if you live in the city! We seldom feed them anything more than a little scratch grain during the winter months so they cost very little to maintain.  For our little free ranging birds we always keep a couple of golf balls in the nests so the gals use the same nests all the time! 

Get some Bantams and get started, when a few hens start getting "broody" (wanting to sit on her eggs or the golf balls) go to eBay and buy the eggs of your dreams!  Any breed of chicken, duck, peacock, guinea or quail eggs, it doesn't matter just buy something you want to hatch. Once the eggs arrive at your door remove and inspect them and allow them to sit undisturbed for about 6-8 hours then you can place the eggs under your broody hen or hens. Bantam hens don't care what kind of eggs you use just as long as they are eggs. 

You will have a much greater hatch rate with this method, too!  Once hatched the chicks don't need a brooder box unless you want to seperate them from the "mama" hen.  Some folks don't want to leave the chicks with a mama hen because the survival rate may be better in a brooder depending on weather or the area.  It's up to you at hatch time if you want to move the chicks to a brooder and give mama another clutch to sit on! 

We bought 24 RARE Buckeye eggs this past summer and placed them under 3 hens, all but one hatched. That is much better than the 40-50% hatch rate some folks normally have with a styro-foam incubator. You don't have to worry about bacteria build up, water levels, humidity or cleaning out brooder boxes when the babies hatch either! If you want to go on vacation for a week while the mama hen does all the work you can enjoy the time away without worry.

Don't have any broody Bantam hen's??? Then try any of the Silkie breeds, they are very broody too and sitting on eggs, like most Bantams, is their life long passion. We have been keeping Bantams for several years just for this purpose and they have hatched everything from quail to turkeys (a big egg for such a little bird). It is so much easier than having to use the incubators, less messy as well and you can go away for a long weekend and not worry about a power failure or humidity.

If you raise free range poultry we highly recommend you let the mama hen raise the chicks.  You will find chicks raised by a mama hen survive the "wild" much better than those raised in a brooder.  In quail we see birds that are much more flighty than pen raised quail. It is also great fun to watch a hen mother the chicks even when the babie chicks are not the same breed!