The first thing you need to decide is whether or not you want to hatch them from an incubator or hatch them from a mothering hen.
both have certain complications the first one is that not every hen will lay on eggs until they hatch and certain breeds effect this for instance while road island reds and bard rocks rarely ever lay on there eggs I have known farmers that wouldn't be able to stop there bantams from doing it even if they didn't want them too.
So if you are really interested in raising your own chickens I suggest getting Bantams.
To get your chickens to start laying on there eggs simpley set up a zone where you do and don't gather the eggs for best results only gather them in designated nesting boxes and leave say the space underneath the nesting box as a space for them to lay on there own eggs and the chickens will figure out that if they want to keep there eggs then they wont ley them in the nesting boxes.
With some luck 3 weeks later you will have some more chickens.
Now that we have went over mothering hens we have to get to the more complicated idea of raising them in an incubator which is harder on your part because YOU have to be the mothering hen.
A common question people may ask is "How do I know if the eggs are fertilized?" and the simple awnser is that if you have a good rooster thats mating with all the hens then ALL the eggs are fertilized (so you want to invest in an Ultra Alpha male of a rooster)and that trick we saw in the cartoons with the candle and positioning the egg next to the light only has limited uses as unfertilized eggs are almost identical on the inside as fertilized ones so even if you can see inside the egg its only good if the chick on the inside is partially developed.
That said you want to collect the eggs from the hen as soon as you can after they are laid to ensure that the egg is good and get it to your incubator If the egg falls below a certain temperature they are no longer good.
After that follow your incubators instructions which usually involve taking marker and marking one side and turning the eggs once a day and make sure that when it comes time for them to hatch
(21 days) that they have a place to get out of the incubator and run around.
Other Notes:
Do not try to make your own incubator!
We have had peoples houses burn down because they didn't make the incubator right and it became a fire hazard.
I remember reading a set of instructions that told you that you can make an incubator out of cardboard and newspaper with a 120W light bulb which is really nothing more then a box of matchsticks with a timber on it.
Don't give up after failure.
when I got my own incubator I found the survival rate to be rather low at about 1 in 4 eggs hatching but still its not a bad deal especially since a baby chick sell for about $2.00 a piece depending on the breed.
What about Inbreeding?
The best way to avoid inbreeding is to get a new rooster every
1-3 years.
