Anyone here incubate chicken eggs?

[muddstopper]

My controllers where mounted outside the box as well. The sensors/probes where all that was placed inside. Even setup like that, I found that as the humidity changed, so did the temps. I am not smart enough to understand what was going on, but I suspect the moisture somehow effected the sensor readings. Using just a simple wafer thermostat, it didnt seem to matter what the humidity was, the temps would stay the same. I also found that simply adding more eggs to the incubator would throw off the humidity levels. My incubators held 240 eggs and I would often set one tray this week and then another tray the next and I always saw a spike in humidity. After the initial spkie and after a few hours the humidity levels would again stabilize. Eggs being porous I again only guess that the extra moisture was coming from the new eggs as they warmed up.

 

[jwmorris]

After the initial spkie and after a few hours the humidity levels would again stabilize.

I don't know what exactly was going on with yours or what and how everything was set up but sounds like the humidifer was on the small side. I used one designed to humidify a large room, so even if I opened the door, after I closed it, it was back to the setting in 30 seconds.

Now depending on how you are adding humidity could certainly effect temp. Like my setup does for sure, that is how they work, the humidity they create is steam. That said that just has the lights stay turned off a bit longer that they would if humidity hadn't been added.

 

[buickanddeere]

I just left a dish of water in the incubator , set the temperature and had 90% hatches if the eggs were less than 10 days old.

 

[muddstopper]

Jw, I had a lot of things go wrong with my first incubators, it took a try or two before I figured it out and quit trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

[jwmorris]

I think that was our first and last try but we have 17 chicks now.

Not exactly sure how they do the calculations but we started with 23 eggs if you counted them all that would be about 74%.

But we dropped one and three were infertle (never candled anything but clear) and one chick was dragging something around and died the night after it hatched. That left just one egg that didn't hatch that had a chance to. That would put us closer to 95%.

 

[sallyb]

I'm a builder myself and it's been a struggle to teach myself that my time and money is better spent buying something rather than building. I just tool a look at all the electronics and said that a store bought incubator was cheaper. Glad you were able to have fun!

tor

Growing up it was my job to tend the incubator, hatched 100 eggs at a time, humidity is important, and turning,we would mark an x on egg to turn evenly. Milk carton with hole on the side so you can see egg ,put lamp for light so you can "candle" the eggs to see if chicken is alive in early stage of development. and stop turning eggs at least 2 days before they hatch. I enjoyed this job as a child,we also hatched quail and dove eggs,from plowing in the field the fowl would be disturbed and they will not go back to nest,so we brought eggs to incubator and hatched them, hunting was never allowed on our land and we never ate anything but the chickens. Do enjoy this with your children, Mother Nature taught me about the circle of life,it's beauty ,joy,and it's saddness.

 

[jwmorris]

They quicky became less than fun but we had a 5 or so out of the brooder today and she was happy to see they came to her vs running away from her as she reached down on them inside.

 

[kg7il]

I have a small incubator that i built following the plans in Storey's Chicken Book.
I had to experiment with the size (Diameter) of the water dish, but finally found a six inch (approx) bowl that produces the right humidity at the right temperature.

Usually all hatch...

 

[nybirdman]

First pheasant hatch today;started piping yesterday.354 eggs per x4 incubators=lots of pheasant.I have quite a few pre-sold as day olds and more orders coming in.Hens are laying like crazy right now.

 

[jwmorris]

First pheasant hatch today;started piping yesterday.354 eggs per x4 incubators=lots of pheasant.I have quite a few pre-sold as day olds and more orders coming in.Hens are laying like crazy right now.

Any photos to post?