The Ancient Egg Hatcheries of Egypt

Chickens that are raised in farms are almost never hatched by their mothers. Instead, they are hatched using artificial heat in large electric ovens called incubators, where hundreds and sometimes thousands of eggs could be hatched at the same time. Electric incubators are a modern invention, but the practice of artificial incubation itself is thousands of years old. The Ancient Egyptians were the first to use poultry hatcheries. They fascinated foreign travellers who had never seen anything like that before. Many of these travellers left bewildering accounts of the strange method Egyptian used to get their chicks. Because they were seldom told in details the inner workings of the hatcheries, they speculated, and often got it wrong. One writer claimed that the eggs were hatched by attendants who sat on them. Friar Simon Fitzsimons, who traveled to Egypt during the 14th century, wrote in disbelief how chickens were generated by fire from eggs, “without cocks and hens,” unaware the eggs were fertilized in the traditional manner by roosters before they were placed in the incubation house. Even Aristotle wrote about the hatcheries, suggesting that they were hatched by burying the eggs in dung heaps. The first widely read travelogue containing an authentic description of the Egyptian incubation ovens was “ The Travels of Sir John Mandeville ,” published in 1356. Sir Mandeville wrote: And there is a common house in that city that is all full of small furnaces, and thither bring women of the town their eyren of hens, of geese, and or ducks for to be put into those furnaces.  And they that keep that house cover them with heat of horse dung, without hen, goose or duck or any other fowl.  And at the end of three weeks or of a month they come again and take their chickens and flourish them and bring them forth, so that all the country is full of them.