Name Change, My First Experience with Farm Innovators Bator

Finished with my hatch. Thank you for all the help!
Set 19 eggs. First 2 weeks got rid of 10 eggs as clears or bacterial rings. Put them into lockdown last Thursday, they started hatching the following Sunday. Out of the last 9 remaining eggs, we hatched 7 peeps. We had one death early this am sadly. So 6 of my project birds. I actually moved them under my broody momma that just hatched out some babies this am. She was very happy to take more! So would that be a 78% hatch rate? or 37%?
Last 2 eggs, did an eggtopsy. Both late quitters, lockdown or right before.

Cleaned out the incubator to set eggs either tomorrow or Thursday

fuzziecreatures said:

Finished with my hatch.  Thank you for all the help!
Set 19 eggs.  First 2 weeks got rid of 10 eggs as clears or bacterial rings.  Put them into lockdown last Thursday, they started hatching the following Sunday.  Out of the last 9 remaining eggs, we hatched 7 peeps.  We had one death early this am sadly.  So 6 of my project birds.  I actually moved them under my broody momma that just hatched out some babies this am.  She was very happy to take more!  So would that be a 78% hatch rate?  or 37%?
Last 2 eggs, did an eggtopsy.  Both late quitters, lockdown or right before.

Cleaned out the incubator to set eggs either tomorrow or Thursday

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I don't figure clears into my hatch rate since they weren't fertile. Just count the quitters against the live chicks

I just started my 2nd full load in my Farm Innovators bator, we will see how it goes, I am going to have to come up with more brooder space lol. I have 26 chicks from my last hatch in the basement in the brooder I have, we have an order coming from McMurray next week of 15 plus I'm sure a couple extras, of some cochins my wife wanted and a bunch of roosters for the freezer to fill out the order, and now I have set the incubator full again. This hatch is mainly for a friend of mine who wants to buy some chicks from me so hopefully I will have similar results to last time and he will take the whole hatch, otherwise I may have to put an ad on craigslist to get rid of some chicks, or maybe raise them to pullet stage and sell them in trios with some extra roosters, I don't know.

Good luck on your next hatch. I will start another one once I get back from memorial day vacation and I find eggs for sale. Well I will give this incubator 2 thumbs up too. I bought it off Amazon (every feed store within 20 miles sold out of incubators) and there's some mixed reviews. I thought it was perfect for the price especially. Is yours the one with the fan and turner? I read here someone who believes manually turning increases hatch rate. Mine is the one with nothing. I put flat stones under the mesh. So by full do you mean 42? I'll do 36 again probably just because people sell by the dozen. And lastly, do you have a coonhound? I have a Treeing Walker Coonhound and a Bloodhound.

Ya I have the one with the fan and turner, I'd have a hard time believing manual turning would be better, if anything it would be similar as long as you remember to turn regularly which I would not. A full load with the turner is 42 I imagine without the turner you could fit far more. I put Ziploc sandwich bags partially filled with water under the screen for additional thermal mass. I used to have hounds back when I made up that name, hunted bear, coon, coyote. The most recent batch I had were 2 redbones and a red tick walker cross pup, I started working away from home so had to get out of it, I had a couple blue ticks before that. Now I'm back home again but am not getting back into hounds, it just takes too much time and money to keep good dogs, I have instead got myself a good bird dog and getting back into upland birds and waterfowl hunting

Well my eggs are hatching, so far I have 10 chicks, started on day 18-19 again, same as last time, I left the heat adjusted the same as before too, didn't use any water at all, humidity was close to 30 at first then was down to 20-25 for the rest of incubation period, raised humidity to 60 at lockdown and hatching eggs have raised it to around 70 now. After this I will be done hatching for the year unless a friend needs some hatched, next time I will mess with the temp and try to get it low enough that my hatches actually take 21 days.

Scratch that, I believe I have more than 10 now but I can't tell since the moisture is fogging the window, I can no longer see anything lol. I hope I don't get too many, he only wanted to keep like 10 or 12 so he said he would take around 20 to account for culling out the roosters this fall.

Thank you Blu, I appreciate that you started this thread. This was my 'deciding' factor to go ahead and purchase the 4200 series.
Thanks too, to everyone else who put their opinion and experience out here.
For the others that will come down the pike, I, too, will post my results and finished opinion of those results when all is said and done.
Thank you fellow BYCers! I am so thankful you are here!

HugHess said:

Thank you Blu, I appreciate that you started this thread. This was my 'deciding' factor to go ahead and purchase the 4200 series.
Thanks too, to everyone else who put their opinion and experience out here.
For the others that will come down the pike, I, too, will post my results and finished opinion of those results when all is said and done.
Thank you fellow BYCers! I am so thankful you are here!

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Ditto! You all have helped me get a 100% hatch last Monday

I impetuously decided to hatch an OEGB egg that was given to me at a fair farm exhibit. I stopped by a TSC store and bought the FI incubator pro series, cuz it was on sale. I had never used an incubator, so I carefully read this thread for tips. I added 3 of my own Silkie eggs (none of my gals were broody), so if the OEGB hatched, hopefully it would have a buddy or two.

I decided to dry hatch, so I added no water and left the vent holes uncapped. I filled the outer troughs w/ Ziploc snack baggies of water for thermal mass. I ignored the gauges, used an Accurite thermometer w/ remote sensor. After about 3 days of fiddling and watching, the temp was staying stable at 99 -100 deg., so I added the eggs. Squirting about 5 ml of water into a vent hole with a syringe 2x/day kept the humidity between 25 - 40%.

I only opened the bator twice - candling at 10 days and lockdown on day 17. Temp and humidity recovered quickly each time.

At lockdown, I filled the inner water troughs and positioned two wet sponges in shallow containers under vent holes. I also put textured shelf liner over the metal grate. I never added any more water to the troughs during the rest of incubation. Squirting about 10 ml of water onto the sponges 2x/day kept humidity around 55 - 65%. Every chick hatched quickly on day 20 and are healthy little peepers!

Hey. Washing the dust off farm innovators

I haven't done another hatch with mine yet but have a friend who is on his 3rd hatch with my eggs and has had decent results, not as good as mine but he takes the chicks out as they hatch rather than leaving them all in and I believe he ends up killing chicks because I'd the humidity loss from opening the incubator numerous times during the hatch, he's been getting around 20 each hatch with some dead in the shell which is likely from getting stuck with too low a humidity