‘We’d never ever thought about hatching eggs before, however, an opportunity arose and it seemed to be a good idea at the time!! Not knowing a thing about incubators or eggs, we purchased a Brinsea Ovation 28 Eco incubator, which duly arrived and that evening we followed the instructions and we were up and running. Flushed with excitement, we bid for our eggs via e-Bay and several days later they arrived carefully packed in polystyrene and paper. We left them a couple of days to settle and popped into our incubator our first batch of Lady Amherst pheasant eggs. Conveying our new found knowledge to some friends of ours that we were incubating pheasant eggs, they casually mentioned the humidity and the control of the humidity. Humidity?? This was a new one to us – panic ensued and so I rang Brinsea about our predicament. The lovely Fiona calmed the situation and suggested the Brinsea Ovation 28 EX as it has humidity control. They were so good, she organised with our distributor for an EX to be sent to us, all we had to do was send the Eco back.
Out of our first batch we only got one chick. I think this was down to the fact that we had borrowed an incubator whilst waiting for the EX to arrive and maybe the eggs were too disturbed to form properly, however the chick is now nearly 5 weeks old and looking good. We purchased a second batch of eggs – 6 Lady Amherst and 12 Silvers. This time around we were far more successful. Out of this new batch of 18 eggs we hatched 14 chicks in the EX. The thing I love about the Brinsea is the clear cover. To watch a chick fight their way out of an egg is truly amazing. We had to help 3 chicks out of their shells as the membranes had dried out but they survived and are looking healthy.’
Alan Woodward
Alan’s first hatch of pheasant eggs in his Ovation Incubator
Alan was delighted with his first hatch and is now hooked!
