As expected of a farmer, you can take care of a wide variety of livestock in Stardew Valley. Getting new animals can be an excellent source of income for a growing farm, but it’s not exactly something a brand-new farmer can do out of the starting gate. In order to get chickens, ducks, and dinosaurs effectively, you will first need to unlock the incubator. This cylinder is what you need to turn eggs from a way to turn a profit to a much more impactful method of profit.
The Incubator is a cylindrical device, seemingly full of wheat or another grain based on its model. This furniture piece sits to the left of the hay hopper in coops that it appears in. When eggs are placed inside of them, they can hatch into different chicken types, specifically Chickens, Dinosaurs, Ducks, Golden Chickens or Void Chickens.
How to Get the Incubator
In order to get an incubator in the first place, you must upgrade a coop to a Big Coop. This upgrade costs 10,000g, 400 Wood, and 150 Stone, as well as two days of Robin’s time. Once you do so, the capacity of your Coop improves to 8, you can house all chicken and bird types, and you will find a cylinder next to your hay hopper.
Much like how a Big Barn enables your animals to have children, Big Coops and Deluxe Coops each come with an incubator that sits besides the other goods your coop comes with. There is no way to craft it and you can’t exactly move it to another part of your coop at will. Just like the Hay Hopper, the wooden cylinders come with the building they are in.
The Deluxe Coop’s Incubator is no different than the one found in a Big Coop. The only marked difference between Big Coops and Deluxe Coops are size, the autofeed system, and the ability to house rabbits. As well as a major price tag! Deluxe Coops are 20,000g, 500 Wood, and 200 Stone above their Big compatriots.
How to Use the Incubator
Once you have an Incubator, you can simply place eggs into it by interacting with it. If the egg can hatch into a type of Chicken, Dinosaur, or Duck, it can be placed into a Coop’s Incubator. Once the chicken is in, you just have to wait for the animal to hatch; no further effort is required on your part.
The only eggs that will fit in this tool are Eggs, Brown Eggs, Large Eggs, Large Brown Eggs, Dinosaur Eggs, Duck Eggs, Golden Eggs, and Void Eggs. Other egg types may need different incubators in order to hatch, since they will likely not be placed in a coop when they hatch.
Like the Slime or Ostrich Incubator, this one just requires you to place an egg within it. It is well-cared for during the incubation time and you don’t even need to take the new chick out of the device.
Egg Incubation Times
Once you have your egg in an incubator, they take quite a long time to hatch. The following incubation times are for each egg group.
- Around 6 Days: Chickens (Egg, Brown Egg, Large Egg, Large Brown Egg), Ducks (Duck Egg), Golden Chicken (Golden Egg), Void Chicken (Void Egg)
- Around 11 Days: Dinosaur (Dinosaur Egg)
The Coopmaster Profession halves the time that it takes to hatch an animal. It also improves the time to befriend an animal.
Expert Tip
Without the Coopmaster profession, hatching an animal is very rarely profitable over selling its products – as long as your coop is full, that is. The amount of time it takes to hatch, befriend, and sell a Chicken for its full 1,040g price tag is almost never worth it compared to the 190g Mayonnaise it can create daily. This same general rule applies to all coop creatures that can be incubated; it is almost always better to keep eggs to make mayonnaise than to hatch a new animal and sell an old one, unless you are a Coopmaster.
