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Galanie's Page

(Some pictures of my chickens are on my other page at http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/my-flock-17)

 

 

Yet another homemade incubator from an old cooler. I had everything around here already but the Hot Water Heater thermostat and the lamp socket so it cost me a total of about $13 to build.

I used the directions from various other incubators here, but I'm including a diagram of the wiring that is easy to understand. I gathered the info from more than one source here and compiled it into one diagram.

 

simple wiring diagram

 

The finished incubator:

view with top on

 

Below, the thermostat is installed the way I learned from rebelcowboysnb (visit his page, it's great) to have the back of the thermostat face the light and make it around 3 inches away. Since this change I have it so that the temp only varies by 1 degree. It is possible to make zero variation which I did have at first, but I'll take 99.1 to 100.4 and am not complaining.

 

Inside of incubator

 

I have also added scrap tile to the bottom as a heat sink. It really helps to keep temps stable. There are a couple of water containers in there but I normally just use the little round one you see the tubing going into.

 

 

For more detailed directions to build one, see the many great how-to's at http://www.backyardchickens.com/chicken-coop-incubator.html :)

Comments (2)

This is pretty neat! I bet it holds heat really well, even while you are turning the eggs! I saw an automatic egg turner @ TSC that probably would not be hard to put in there! Just have to cut a small slot for the cord!
Brie
It dies, Brie! And as you can see, I have no turner and turn them by hand. I do it rather quickly and it doesn't really cool off as much as you'd think. Another good idea is to put jars of water in there, bricks, just about anything that will absorb heat.
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