The frustration of hatching eggs

MWF Hatchery

Hatching
May 14, 2015
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Whether you have hatched (or attempted to) 6 eggs or 600,000 eggs, a majority of us have had something go wrong with at least one hatch.

We have had chickens for 3 years now. The first year we incubated Silkie eggs from our own flock and it went pretty good. 7/11 eggs hatched. The next year we did a few more hatches with some success. Last year we only let our broody hens hatch eggs and they did quite well (barred rock).

This brings me to this year. I have one incubator set up. 1/2 full with 21 day old Muscovy eggs and some other breeds, and the other half is 3 day old duck eggs. Then my hatcher has about 15, 21 day old chicken eggs. I am using farm innovator Styrofoam incubators.

Now, I live in an RV (house burned down 2013) and for the last two days both incubators have been going really wanky. I live in Minnesota and right now we are having, well, Minnesota weather! I go to bed, its 55*, I wake up its 35*. I rarely turn the heater on in my rv because I get too hot. But now I am FRUSTRATED because today I woke up, hoping to see at least one chick hatched, and the hatcher is at about 89*. I quickly check the duck eggs, also around 89*. Those poor incubators both had their lights on telling me they were really trying to keep the eggs warm and the temp up, but the just couldn't!


I'm currently trying to get the temp back up and regulated. In the next hour or two the Minnesota weather should be around 45-50 degrees, and then the incubators should be able to handle that temp.

I will post updates on my eggs if the hatch or not.

Not sure if I'll get any replies, but words of encouragement, and also if you'd like to share if you have had frustrating hatches and whether they turned out good or bad.


Thanks!
Shannon
 
I've had chickens off and on my whole life but have only been breeding/hatching going on 6 years.
I was so frustrated with cheap incubators and being cheap myself, I build a monster of an incubator/hatcher combination. I've had lots of different controllers and heat sources in it and each time I do a modification, it gets better. However I know the temperature stratifies somewhat even with 4 fans pulling the air down. (I built my prototype too tall)
So I usually swap the top eggs with the lower eggs a couple times but I didn't do that this time and the ones that were on the lower rack are hatching a day late. One or 2 hatched on time yesterday but the others were a little late and some are still hatching.

One thing you can try is to build a little wall around your incubators with some cardboard creating a buffer zone so the cold room air stays away from them.
Good luck to both of us.
 
Thanks so much for your reply! I will build the wall of card board. My mother also suggested that to me today.

I also bought an incubator today from China lol. It us actually being sent to me from California or something, but it was made in China (what isn't these days). Its all plastic and digital, has an automatic egg turner that holds 48 eggs and cost me under $100. I figured I might as well try it!
 
Thanks so much for your reply! I will build the wall of card board. My mother also suggested that to me today.

I also bought an incubator today from China lol. It us actually being sent to me from California or something, but it was made in China (what isn't these days). Its all plastic and digital, has an automatic egg turner that holds 48 eggs and cost me under $100. I figured I might as well try it!
make sure you keep the box and packing the incubator comes in. They are terrible at maintaining heat so the packaging is used around the bottom and sometimes around the top. Its like a plastic lined foam incubator.
 
I use the same incubators in tn. my problem is heat they just get to hot I.ve been posting the she said he said thread I had to build a cabinet to put mine in I'm on hugehs net and about out of bytes can't post pictures check out the thread I think the post is about half way through it its a very funny thread if not my hughes restarts the 26th email me and i'll post them on this thread good luck with your hatches
 
Thanks so much for your reply! I will build the wall of card board. My mother also suggested that to me today.

I also bought an incubator today from China lol. It us actually being sent to me from California or something, but it was made in China (what isn't these days). Its all plastic and digital, has an automatic egg turner that holds 48 eggs and cost me under $100. I figured I might as well try it!
oh no..This incubator is terrible. I live in florida and bought one. Even in a 80degree spare bedroom it can not keep temperature. I extra insulated it with Styrofoam sheets and kept the top covered with a towel and still it would keep loosing temperature. When I complained to the seller (also not being shipped from china but from CA) the seller said they would send me a new ptc heater which of course they did not. I lost over half of the eggs I had in that incubator.
 

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