Brinsea Octagon 20 ECO Manual Turn Egg Incubator

I have wanted a Brinsea Incubator for a long time. I have had the styrofoam type and found them bulky and hard to clean and did not have great success with them. The reviews I read on the Brinseas mostly gave them high ratings and most people who owned them recommended them. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to buy one the model I wanted was no longer available from Brinsea and I could not afford the next model up and did not want one that hatched fewer eggs. I was fortunate to find one from another site and I have been using it none stop since I got it in March. I really love this incubator.

After a couple of bad hatches in a styrobator, I decided to replace my incubator. I bought a Rcom Pro 20, which I love. However, I didn't really want to hatch in it, for several reasons. I wanted another incubator just for hatching, but my main requirement was that it be plastic. I also didn't want to spend a fortune, since I already spent quite a bit on the Rcom. The Brinsea Eco met these requirements, so I opted to purchase it. All in all, this incubator works very well, though I had a couple of problems.

The incubator is reliable once it is set to an appropriate temperature. However, do NOT trust the "preset at 99.5" temperature. Mine was 5 degrees off out of the box, and would have killed my peachicks had I trusted it. It is easy to calibrate, so it isn't too much of an issue, but it is a little misleading to state that it is preset at that temperature when it is actually no where near it. I have read that some people had trouble getting the humidity high enough for hatching, but I did not have any trouble with this. I simply filled both of the troughs with water and covered the entire bottom of the incubator with paper towels that were dipped in the troughs acting as a wick. This kept the humidity high, even after opening the incubator (over 60% for me). Also, temperature was recovered very quickly, even after the power went out. It had dipped quite a lot during that time, but I have no idea how long it was out, so I will not hold that against the incubator.

This incubator is tough to compare to my other incubator, because it does not have all of the functionality. However, that leads to my second problem with it. Since at this time I did not need extra frills, I did not want to spend an additional $200 for the Advance model. I am able to buy the turner separately, which I appreciate in case I decide that I would like a second fully automatic incubator. However, I wish that I was able to add the humidity pump as well. Unfortunately, it is integrated with the Advance model, so is not an option to add to the Eco model. In fact, for my purposes, the humidity pump would be more useful than the automatic turner.

There are a couple of other minor problems. First, because of the design of the top, it is not simple to clean in it. Fuzz builds up in it from hatching. Second, large chicks (I hatched peachicks) do not really have enough room to stand up in it. I did not have any problems with this in my first hatch in the incubator, but I am a little nervous about slipped tendons because of this.