Home made incubator

Cajun Chooks said:

I glad you got it, it should be all downhill from here.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much.The temp is staying stable. I candled the dozen test eggs the mallard egg is the only one i can see veins clearly.The pekin eggs are not fertile or early death.The chicken i think i see faint veins but not sure they are so dark.So fingers crossed Thanks again would never have gotten done without ya

Thought id give a update on my bator.Its doing great holding temps at 100 F. Some of my eggs will go into lockdown oct 31st. They are all growing and doing wonderful.(the eggs)

i also have a home mad incubator around 400 eggs, and had nothing but problems with temp swings untill i bought

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/RANCO-Electronic-Temperature-Control-3ZP77?Pid=search

this thing works like a champ no swings and temp i right on the money

Well, I've made my self an incubator - like most of you .
I've wanted to know how cheap can a good incubator get.
So I did it from scratch. I thought I should share it with you. I guess this is the best place to do it.
SO....

The walls are made of polistyrene - the kind you use to isolate home walls.
The thermostat is self made using a microcontroller, a thermistor (a resistence that changes it's value with the temperature), a led display and .... a few other pieces.
I have also made myself an egg turner from a cd unit motor and a switch from the cd unit and .. of course a microcontroller. The egg turner is not very used right now however since it hold 50 eggs and I do not have more than 10 at time. So i use a smaller incubator now with the same model of thermostat.

The heating element is ... of course... a lightbulb.
This is an image made during the first tryout of the incubator. The temperature is in centigrades since I live in Romania.


This is the thermostat alone after ansembly:

The module in the left is used to also connect the ventilator (a pc cooler - well I'm an IT guy ).

This last picture is not very clear but you can see the "heating element":


So that's it. And it works like a charm.
And now for the price .... a full 5.84 $. The most expensive pieces were the microcontroller - arround 1 $, the relay the same, and the led display - 1 $. The walls were 1 $. The walls are sticked together using some wood screws.

Just for fun a picture with the hatcher (self made of course )

Looks good!

I didn't have any luck.I did go buy chicks from the local feed store.Leghorns,brown and white ones. I'm still set on hatching quail.I dont see them for sale anywhere.So now its like some kind of test to to make quail hatch.
I would be curious if anyone has a store bought foam cooler,how many ventilation holes does it have? I bought an bi metal switch and i think my water heater thermometer worked better(more sensitive).