GENERAL NEWS
- Encouraging initial results of field trials of Contact Incubation, (C.I.T.)

Following initial in-house trials, ten prototype contact incubators were constructed with the aim of testing the validity of contact incubation (C.I.T.) across a wide range of species at respected breeding centres around the world.

The question to be answered was ‘Does Contact Incubation provide better hatch rates than conventional artificial incubation?’

Selecting eggs for testing

For centuries incubation of eggs was confined almost entirely to commercial poultry and these species have been modified by continual incidental selection to become adapted to the kind of incubation environment to which they were subjected.

Those eggs which hatched were the ones better suited to artificial incubation than those that failed, and so, over generations the species evolved to suit the machines in which they were incubated.

Contact Incubation Technology (CIT) replicates the natural nest and so is likely to be most successful in ‘wild’ species where this natural selection has not taken place. But such species are not artificially bred in large numbers and so field trials are small in scale and less sensitive to the effects under investigation. Nevertheless first results are encouraging.

Field Trials

Trials in the UK were conducted by National Bird of Prey Centre, The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust (WWT) at Slimbridge and large scale private raptor breeding centre. Each of these centres artificially incubate significant numbers of large ‘wild’ species and are in an ideal position to make comparisons between the Contact Incubation prototypes and conventional incubators. Full analysis of the data is not yet complete but the initial results from the breeders involved has been very encouraging.

The WWT at Slimbridge performed A/B tests between Contact/Conventional incubation with a sample of 61 Chilean Flamingo eggs. They artificially incubated eggs before introducing them back to the parents when the eggs pipped.

81% of eggs incubated by contact hatched successfully against 66% in conventional machines.The proportion of chicks dying during hatch in the nest was also smaller for those eggs incubated by contact – 15% compared to 20% with conventionally incubated eggs. This suggests that the chicks incubated in the Contact Incubator were stronger than those from the conventional incubator.

These results support the idea that eggs hatch better when incubated by contact (C.I.T.) – further results and feedback from other test sites will follow.

© Brinsea Products Inc 2006