Little Giant Incubator Tricks - Page 5

Found a site on turning, or not turning eggs...and the hatch rate.  Maybe it's here in this thread already, haven't gone all the way through the pages.. but hope this works..  http://dev.biologists.org/content/5/3/293.full.pdf

To increase the humidity I use baby food jars of warm water AND sponges cut to fit into the jar and extend out of the jar by 1-2 inches. Acts like a wick. With 4 I can hit 90% RH which turkey eggs need.

ALso, as an LG user I kept a note book the first time. Very helptful to see temp swings, etc. Kept a record of turning the eggs, RH of incubator, temp in the room , and any notes that I thought important at the time.

Turning or not turning? Hens must do it for a reason. A broody bothers the eggs many times a day; I figure she know what she's doing. My hens have beter hatch rates than I do!  I have a book put out by Janet Stromburg on Hatching with great details, and turning even during the waiting to set period seems to be important. THe big hatcheries do it, too.

Here is another good tip for LG owners. It works great.

I agree on that room temp..that's a big one right there.  At least that's what I've found.  What did you find in your keeping notes on the room temp?  I found that it isn't necessarily important "where" the bator is, but rather the room is at pretty much the same temp.

this is a fabulous idea, I stayed up last night with a piece of poster board and made myself a huge calender to use for the process.  I have room to write down turning times and to record Temps and humidity. 
Each "day" is about 4x5" so plenty plenty of space to  jot everything.  I can pohotograph it later and addto my page so others can help me spot any istakes I've made along the way. 

One thing I saw throughout the night, after I closed the door and went down to bed.  I came back up and checked every few hours or so, the temp drops in that room alot.  Don't know if its cuz there's only one heat vent in that room or that it's the west wall of the house.  We did have water lines free in there before, Hubby tore   the walls apart and rerouted water lines so they are INside the room now and can't freeze.  We get strong NW winds in winter time and pipes ran right thru that area of the walls. I will probably have to leave the small electric heater in there and running on low thru the night tonight and see how it fares. 

Oh the hastle of setting up a nursery!!

I did see a correlation between the room temp and the LG temps.  A ripple effect. First the outside temps cause the house temps to change; the room temp changes  then the LG  would also increase 12-24 hours later or so. I only found this by recording the data and analyzing it.

I see a lot of fluctuation in the LG temps; if the room swings up or down 5 degrees, the LG will also follow the same swing by 1-2 degrees. Annoying really. Stable room temps a plus. IMO

I use the red capped holes to moderate the swings in temp; and a PC fan is under a hole so I can force air out of the LG to some degree.