Key Points of Incubation Techniques in Meat Pigeon Farming

In meat pigeon farming, there are 2 methods for hatching squabs: one is natural incubation, and the other is artificial incubation. Below we will briefly describe these 2 incubation methods respectively.

Natural Incubation

After pigeons are paired up, they proceed to reproduce, and the female pigeon crouches in the nest bowl for a long time. After laying the 2nd egg, the parent pigeons begin to incubate. During the parent pigeons' incubation process, the following management tasks should be noted and carried out:

1. Keep the environment quiet, avoid external disturbances and the occurrence of stress factors, and provide appropriate shading for the pigeon cage when necessary to encourage the parent pigeons to focus on incubating.

2. The nest bedding should ideally be double-layered old burlap, with rice husks or wood shavings or dry fine sand underneath the burlap, with dry fine sand being more ideal, and the thickness in the nest bowl should be 2-3 cm. The keeper should check the egg-laying and incubation situation every day, and promptly remove any broken eggs found.

3. Increase the nutritional level of the feed during the incubation period, ensuring the crude protein content reaches 18-20%, and the energy level should also be increased accordingly. This gives the parent pigeons a strong physique and lays a good foundation for brooding squabs. Prevent the eggshell from being soiled with feces, because pathogens may invade the egg and cause embryo death. If feces have already stained the egg, it can be wiped clean with gauze.

4. Candling is essential work. Candling should be performed once each on the 5th day and the 10th day of incubation. During the 1st candling, if red-brown blood vessels distributed in a spider-web pattern are found inside the egg and the shape is stable, it is a fertilized egg, and it should be allowed to continue incubating. If blood vessels are present but appear as a single thick line in a "U" shape, it is a dead sperm egg. If it is transparent without blood vessels, it is an unfertilized egg. Dead sperm eggs and unfertilized eggs should be removed. On the 10th day of incubation, perform the 2nd candling. If most of the egg appears dark, with the other end showing a relatively translucent blank area due to the enlarged air cell, it indicates the embryo is developing healthily. If the black and white areas inside the egg are not clearly distinguished, the contents inside the egg are unstable, there is a sensation of movement when turning the egg, and the eggshell appears gray, it is a dead embryo egg and should be removed promptly.

5. Promptly carry out egg merging, because egg merging is one of the effective measures to improve the reproductive capacity of meat pigeons. After removing unfertilized eggs, dead sperm eggs and dead embryo eggs, merge 2 eggs per nest into one nest, and merge the remaining eggs into other nests with the same incubation period or a difference of 1 day. Merging nests after 10 days is preferable. If nests are merged before 10 days, the empty-nest laying pigeons need only about 8 days to lay eggs, and early laying affects the pigeon's physical recovery, and the next clutch may be weak, or phenomena such as unfertilized eggs, dead sperm eggs and dead embryo eggs may appear.

6. Grasping the hatching date is crucial. 7-8 days after the 2nd candling, pay attention to observing the hatching situation of the squabs. If hatching is truly difficult, manual assistance is needed. Generally, when incubation has reached 18 days and only a small hole has been pecked in the shell surface, manual assistance to break the shell is needed. If the incubation period has exceeded 18 days and the shell has not been pecked, the embryo may have died.

7. The incubation temperature for pigeons is very important, and an appropriate temperature should be maintained. In winter, the room temperature should be kept at least above 5 °C. If the temperature is too low, the room should be heated, otherwise the embryos may freeze to death in the early incubation stage. In hot summer weather, reduce the bedding appropriately, open doors and windows, and turn on exhaust fans to keep the room temperature below 32 °C, otherwise stillbirths may occur in the late incubation stage.

Artificial Incubation

Using artificial incubation methods can avoid crushing breeding eggs during incubation, prevent pigeon manure contamination, reduce adverse factors such as mid-term embryo death, improve the hatching rate and chick emergence rate of meat pigeons, shorten the egg-laying cycle of breeding pigeons, accelerate reproduction speed, and improve the reproduction rate. Experiments have proven that the average egg-laying cycle for natural incubation is 63 days, while with artificial incubation the average egg-laying cycle can be shortened to 50 days. Based on this estimate, the egg-laying rate of laying pigeons can be increased by nearly 4 times, and artificial incubation technology should be promoted and applied early in meat pigeon production.

1. Preparation before Incubation

① Incubator: Use a small flat-type incubator, or use a chicken incubator by replacing the egg rack for chicken eggs with an egg rack for pigeon eggs. Carry out maintenance, disinfection and temperature testing of the incubator. The incubator should be kept away from heat sources and avoid direct sunlight.

② Breeding eggs: Breeding eggs should be selected and disinfected. Select fertilized eggs that meet breed requirements, have moderate egg weight and size, normal egg shape, and uniform shell thickness as breeding eggs. Disinfection of breeding eggs is very important; the hatching rate of disinfected breeding eggs is significantly higher than that of undisinfected breeding eggs. Use the formaldehyde gas fumigation disinfection method, with a dosage of potassium permanganate and 30 mL of formalin per cubic meter of space, fumigating at 27-30 °C for 20 minutes. Then they can be moved into the incubator for incubation.

2. Incubation conditions: The key to artificial incubation of meat pigeon breeding eggs is to master conditions such as temperature, humidity and egg turning well, creating a good environment that can satisfy embryonic growth and development, in order to improve hatching results.

① Temperature: Temperature is the most important condition in meat pigeon incubation; only at a suitable temperature can normal material metabolism and growth and development of the embryo be guaranteed. At different developmental stages, embryos require slightly different temperatures. The incubation temperature is 38.7 °C for 1-7 days, 38.3 °C for 8-14 days, and 38 °C after 14 days. 2. Humidity. The relative humidity during incubation is 60-70%. Some suggest that the relative humidity when meat pigeons hatch should reach 80%. Generally speaking, humidity should be high in the early and late incubation stages and low in the middle stage. This is beneficial for the embryo's material metabolism, gas metabolism, and water absorption and evaporation; it is also beneficial for even heating of the egg and shell breaking by the embryo during the hatching period.

② Egg turning: The role of egg turning is to prevent the embryo from adhering to the shell membrane; regulate egg temperature so the embryo is heated evenly; help embryo movement and maintain normal fetal position; increase the contact area between the yolk sac blood vessels, allantoic blood vessels and the yolk and albumen, which is beneficial for nutrient absorption. Generally, turn eggs 2 times on the day of incubation, then turn eggs 6 times per day afterward, until stopping egg turning 2 days before hatching.

3. Inspection of embryonic development: During incubation, frequently check whether embryonic development is normal, so as to promptly detect poor incubation phenomena, identify causes, and take improvement measures. For specific operations, refer to candling in natural incubation.

4. Hatching: When incubation reaches the 6th day, transfer the eggs to the hatcher, and after incubating in the hatcher for 1-2 days, they will break the shell and hatch. The time before and after hatching should preferably be around 24 hours; chicks that hatch too late or too early are not robust. After hatching is completed, the hatcher should be scrubbed and disinfected for use in the next hatching.

5. Incubation records: For each incubation, record the incubation date, number of eggs, source of breeding eggs, candling results each time, incubation batches, hatching results, temperature changes during the incubation period, etc., for reference when analyzing hatching results. The record form can be designed by yourself.

After adopting artificial incubation, the laying pigeons do not bear the task of brooding squabs, and artificial rearing is required.