Incubators Anonymous

duluthralphie said:

You did well!!! Jessimom.

I wish I could do that well sometimes. Poop happens..


I have to tell you a weird thing that happened today... I hatch turkeys and chickens. I incubate them in one of 2 incubators and then move them to hatch. I had a hatch for the 6th those eggs are now done....and thanks to my DW, I did poorly..... Hopefully she learned to never adjust the temps with eggs or birds in the hatchers. She is a nurse so when she asked me the other night what temp I hatched at and I said 99.5 but I like it 99.7-8....or so... I did not realize to her that meant my 99.0 was way too low... Medical stuff I guess, she wanted it right on. so she took it u[on her self to adjust the settings her stupid hubby was running too low.... I did not know this at the time or why she asked these questions.


I hate to get on her too much because I really like her getting involved in the hatching. I wish she would make it her hobby too.... As you all know the foam incubators have very sensitive and unreliable thermostats they spike at a moments notice and so forth.. I checked and the temp was 104,, I explained it nicely to her, and did not get upset. BUT she cooked all those eggs! About 18 CLBS! I had sold, so 2 bad hatches in a row.



I bought some automatic humidity devices for the 1202s. I installed them today and repaired the faulty turner on the other one. Before installing I checked the eggs, I pulled out the top row of turkey eggs and there is a hatched shell in it. Right on the top it says a big 13, So I know when it should hatch. I look to the bottom and there is a chick, I figured dead, but it was alive and happy to see me. Here it was a TOAD! The toad eggs are huge the size of turkey eggs, I mark them as soon as I pick them up, Sometimes my wife picks eggs and does not mark them. So I need to try and ID the eggs. I Id'd the toad egg as a turkey egg! It would have hatched on the 7th instead of the 13th~!

The guy is small and cute, but I am afraid not long for the world, he has what I thought was poop dangling from him. It is actually an umbilical cord and something, yolk sac maybe? Does anyone know can I cut that off? Is there anything I can do for him?

My error for today..

It seems no matter how careful I am and what I do, something new comes up and goes wrong.


I am going to hatch the rest of the year in the other 1202. I am building new frames to hatch in and will stop using the foam ones. Hopefully for good.

I am going to build new hatchers for next year.

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yellowherb said:

I guess I should join this thread since I have not ever turned off my incubator or hatcher since my husband built them.

I have a two tray incubator with auto turners made from a wine cooler and a separate hatcher also made from a wine cooler.

Since I really only breed Sultans and my flock is small I thought I could get away with a small incubator. I had that puppy stuffed so full I was giving eggs away! But after pulling 22 eggs a few days ago to the hatcher, I actually have a few empty rows for a while.

In the incubator I have unknown numbers of Sultan eggs and some CCL and CCLxEE eggs from a trade.
The hatcher has hatched 13 out of 22 eggs since last night and more chicks coming. It's over powered and reaches humidity fast so I can open and shut the door to remove dry chicks rather than leave everyone in there.

I've been hatching for 6 months now. Not sure if I will be able to stop.

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R2elk said:

The auto water system for the cabinet hatchers has a very small valve opening which can easily plug off especially if you have hard water. I use DI in my water systems and have had no blockages since switching to DI (distilled water).

The chick dragging its umbilical cord should be able to make it fine. Just wait until the cord itself is dry and if it doesn't break off on its own you can snip it off at that time. If you cut it off too early there can be bad bleeding and can also possibly allow it to become infected.

You can replace the temperature controllers in the foam incubators with a digital controller which can make them much more easily adjusted and controlled than the original controllers.

Good luck.

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BrieCheese23 said:

It's much like my new hovabator, you turn the dial on top to turn the temp up or down. I spent a day and night adjusting it via three thermometers. You put a small tray under to hold water and sponges and such, put a turner in or hand turn or is for hatching. Basically, it's a still air.

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duluthralphie said:

You did well!!! Jessimom. I wish I could do that well sometimes. Poop happens.. I have to tell you a weird thing that happened today... I hatch turkeys and chickens. I incubate them in one of 2 incubators and then move them to hatch. I had a hatch for the 6th those eggs are now done....and thanks to my DW, I did poorly..... Hopefully she learned to never adjust the temps with eggs or birds in the hatchers. She is a nurse so when she asked me the other night what temp I hatched at and I said 99.5 but I like it 99.7-8....or so... I did not realize to her that meant my 99.0 was way too low... Medical stuff I guess, she wanted it right on. so she took it u[on her self to adjust the settings her stupid hubby was running too low.... I did not know this at the time or why she asked these questions. I hate to get on her too much because I really like her getting involved in the hatching. I wish she would make it her hobby too.... As you all know the foam incubators have very sensitive and unreliable thermostats they spike at a moments notice and so forth.. I checked and the temp was 104,, I explained it nicely to her, and did not get upset. BUT she cooked all those eggs! About 18 CLBS! I had sold, so 2 bad hatches in a row. I bought some automatic humidity devices for the 1202s. I installed them today and repaired the faulty turner on the other one. Before installing I checked the eggs, I pulled out the top row of turkey eggs and there is a hatched shell in it. Right on the top it says a big 13, So I know when it should hatch. I look to the bottom and there is a chick, I figured dead, but it was alive and happy to see me. Here it was a TOAD! The toad eggs are huge the size of turkey eggs, I mark them as soon as I pick them up, Sometimes my wife picks eggs and does not mark them. So I need to try and ID the eggs. I Id'd the toad egg as a turkey egg! It would have hatched on the 7th instead of the 13th~! The guy is small and cute, but I am afraid not long for the world, he has what I thought was poop dangling from him. It is actually an umbilical cord and something, yolk sac maybe? Does anyone know can I cut that off? Is there anything I can do for him? My error for today.. It seems no matter how careful I am and what I do, something new comes up and goes wrong. I am going to hatch the rest of the year in the other 1202. I am building new frames to hatch in and will stop using the foam ones. Hopefully for good. I am going to build new hatchers for next year.

Click to expand...

yellowherb said:

I'm up to idk how many chicks now. Only 1 egg left to pop and I think it might have found a cool spot in the incubator. It should hatch later tonight. And tomorrow I can clean the hatcher and move over more eggs..Oh boy my husband needs to get me a bigger coop built in a hurry! Actually thinking about it, I probably set that one egg hours later than the others since it was out of my favorite hen and I had her name on the egg. chances are I set it right after she laid it so it could hatch with all the other eggs I had set earlier that morning.

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BrieCheese23 said:

So I ended up with more eggs than I had space for and I bought a still air hovabator as my hatcher. It has a kind of turner I wanted to try out too, so win win. Now tonight when it gets here I will have space for my coturnix quails to go into lockdown so my mother's coturnix and A&M coturnix to go in (4 dozen o.o). Of course she was all, "Oh you didn't have to do that. We could've waited. Why'd you spend the money. Yada.. yada... "Mom things*" And yet she was smiling. Then when I get home she looks at me all excited and tells me she remembered at work that we have an incubator in the barn in the loft. A friend lent it to us ages ago and we never ended up using it. So we go up and the thing is a beast! If I can get this tin can get the temps to stabilize (she's currently holding at 102, but I turned it down a bit, so hopefully it'll settle at 101 or 100 to serve as my hatcher. It holds humidity super well. So now I suddenly went from two incubators filled to the brim to four! My mother is on craigslist searching for hatching eggs to fill the third one with since alll my chicken eggs save for four go into lockdown next week. I've infected my mother with hatching disease xD

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