
Artificial Incubation
In 2011, we began artificially incubating all owl eggs due to risk of breakage, poor weight loss, and to increase egg production by double clutching. These new techniques resulted in an immediate increase in egg production and allowed us to reach our target numbers of eggs produced each breeding season. Over the 2019 and 2020, we successfully achieved a three-fold increase in the average number of fertile eggs produced per breeding pair when compared to the number of fertile eggs produced per breeding pair between 2008 and 2018. This was achieved through the combined use of artificial incubation and a husbandry technique called “double clutching”, where the first clutch of eggs produced by each female is removed to encourage the female to lay a second clutch of eggs. The facility has a quarantined incubation room that is set up for artificial incubation, check it out here.





