electric skillet as incubator- experiment- coturnix quail

[ohiogoatgirl]

i have read on tons (if not all) of the "alternative" bators including electric skillet, shoe box, bra, crock pot, oven, electric blanket,...

so i just happen to have an older electric skillet.. about half of the teflon stuff is worn off and i just dont use it or want to use it for food. added to i want to try my hand at hatching and dont have enough cash yet to buy the rest of whats needed for my styro cooler bator.

so i wash out the skillet (with glass top) and set it up on the counter.. snag the mercury thermometer from hangin on the shed.. and check it out.

at first i just turned it on the lowest setting "warm, simmer"... hmm ya i didnt even put the thermometer in there, way too hot. so i pull the top off and let it cool then go back to it. this time i set a metal jar lid in the center of the skillet, lay the thermometer on it, and put on the lid. i slowwwly turn the heat setting dial from "off" toward "warm, simmer"... about halfway between them the skillet kicks on to heat up. i let it heat up about ten minutes and check the temp, only about 80*F. so i slowly dial it up again until it kicks on and repeat the routine... come back and the temp is between 110 and 115*F! eek too high! so i pull the lid off andd leave it to cool again..
try it once again but this time after i got the low temp i just minutely dialed up some, but not enough to bump it on again. come back and the temp was about 102*ish... later again it is 100*F

then i started keepin track of the temps (time.. skillet temp.. house temp)

5:40.. 101*.. 70*
6:30.. 100*.. 69.8*
7:40.. 102*.. 72.5*
8:30.. 101*.. 72.1*
9:00.. 102*.. 71.6*
10:00.. 101*.. 70.5*
10:30.. 101*.. 71.6*
11:00.. 101*.. 69.4*


this is where i am at now. i am thinking since its "still air" the few 102 jumps will be alright. in a few days is payday and i am pickin up a new thermometer/hygrometer that i will put in as well, check the thermometers against each other and then take out the old one and check it against my house temp.
and i'm sure tweaking the humidity i will be at it a bit to get things right.

so this is going to be where i ramble about this little project
the eggs are going to be from my young coturnix hens. i have 1 roo and 4 hens. the roo seems to be doing his job and i have caught some bits of action as well as some foam in the hutch. so this will be test of several things. and if nothing else i will learn from it and have the therm/hygrometer for adding to the styro bator later on.

 

[Bruiserdog99]

ive built my own incubators and unless you got a good thermostat its really hard to regulate good luch though and post if you hatch any

 

[Quail Jailer]

When you've got temp swings you must adjust so your max does not go high enough to kill the eggs, while having your "target temp" as the average
between high and low, typically if your swings are fairly rapid, your eggs will stay right around the average temp.

I have had some pretty high hatch rates using this method, but I don't do it anymore, too much monitoring.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

i am home all the time except maybe an hour max every two weeks. and i have a weird sleep thing so i have to wake up through the night anyhow so it wont be much of an issue for me to pop over and check on it.

2:00.. 101*.. 63.6*
6:00.. 101*.. 58.4* - { still gettin a bit chilly here at night but i will run the space heater a bit to keep house temps more even through the night if needed} -
7:30.. 105*.. 57.4* - {the lid moved to cover the full skillet /: tryin to figure somethin more secure} -
8:40.. 101*.. 58.8*


so now i know i will need to run the space heater a bit at night to keep the temp steady. and i am tryin to come up with somethin to use around the skillet edge to set the lid on, so that i can have air flow and know it wont spike if the lid shifts. that spike was just between 6:40 and 7:30 because the lid was fine when i went out to do the chores at 6:40. i am guessin if i would have had eggs in there a spike like that would have probably affected the hatch.

Thanks for that insight Quail Jailer. right now my average with that 105 spike is 101.45* and without would be 101.09*

right now with reading from the other skillet threads my biggest thing is enough air flow during hatch time. that seemed to be dubbed the one thing that seemed to kill most of the peoples hatches. so once i pick up the new thermometer and hygrometer i will be testing again.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

so checkin my calendar i need to hatch out about june 16. so i need to set in nine days (may 29th).
i am going to eat the eggs i have currently and see if i can tell if they are fertile. anyone ever see the "bullseye" on coturnix egg yolks like they say to do for chicken eggs? readin the thread for looking for it is pretty much just chicken eggs. i can spot it alright on the pics mostly so guess i will see what i can see.

as you can see with my practice run temps i keep the house at just cool enough. i try to not run the A/C much and since *knock on wood* it hasnt been gettin real hot out this temp is comfortable for us.
i am wondering if i should leave the eggs on the counter or in the fridge for the few days i hold back the eggs. the fridge runs cold (like 47*F) and i'm not sure if i should bother with messing with the temp it runs at just to keep back eggs for five or six days.
so leave em out and they'll be above the recommended 55* or keep em in the fridge and they'll be below. although on one of the fb quail groups a guy said he and his wife totally forgot to check for his hatching eggs to arrive and the box sat outside in 15*F weather for three days and he still got about 50% hatch rate.

i only have four hens and for about a week now i have been gettin two eggs a day. from the eggs i am thinking just two of the hens are laying them. since each hen lays a certian color/tone and patterned egg.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

of the 8 eggs i had already, 7 had the bullseye and 1 had the bullseye plus had veins and a blood glob- so it was already growing! i was super shocked at that. so when i start collecting the eggs for hatching in a few days i will be putting the first couple days eggs in the fridge and the next couple days wont go in the fridge, i will mark them with a crayon or food coloring and see if it seems to make a difference in the hatch. but the 8 eggs were in the fridge so....

also since i am experimenting i will be marking an egg (or three lol) and leaving them in the haybox in the hutch. the birds seems always at least one bird in sitting in it through the day and they all 5 pile into it at night to sleep. also the hens have been laying the eggs in the haybox so they get sat on until i gather them up anyhow.
these eggs i will mark and just gather the newly laid eggs. then if they seem to have made it to day 14 i will bring them in and pop them in the skillet-bator to finish out and hatch. that way the adult birds dont kill it(/them). i will do this the same timing as the skillet-bator so the lockdown day matches up if they make it.

i am super excited

 

[Quail Jailer]

I hope you have success, I can't wait to claim I know a girl that hatched eggs in a skillet...


I'm sure theres a slow cook joke in there somewhere....

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

Quail: startin with a skillet and endin with a skillet
Hahaha

Thanks i hope i hatch some out it would be great to have someone finally who has documented doing a skillet bator and it working. And all the details.
The threads on this are very few that come back and say they retried it and got a hatch.. but thats really all they say. Not what they changed or what they think went wrong.

Once i get the skillet setup and holding where needed i will get a video for my youtube channel and link the video here. I have yet to find a video on this method, let alone one that ended up hatching any.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I am not thinkin the haybox incubating idea will work now... /: the two hens have been laying at 6pm and 8pm. Got the one egg at 6:30 freshly laid and warm still. Went out at 8:30 and no second egg... go out at 9 and still no egg, weird, so i pull out the haybox and it had gotten pushedunder the hay enough i didnt see it. So probably laid on time and i just didnt look hard enough. But it was cool, not warm.
So now i am thinkin that might not work.

Dunno i might try and make a nice round nest and put in there just to see what they make of it. If they take to it i will leave an egg out overnight and see if its warm or cold and if any sittin on it in the morning. Who knows. *shrugs*

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I got the new thermometer/hygrometer. Been testing the skillet-bator all day. The old thermometer was way off, i had to start over with tweaking for the right temp.

Think i got it now. Once the temp evened out i started recording info for the test run.

2:40.. 69*.. 99* 45%
3:00.. 68*.. 100* 45%
3:30.. 70*.. 102* 45%
4:00.. 70*.. 100* 42%
4:30.. 70*.. 100* 40%
5:00.. 69*.. 100* 45%
5:30.. 70*.. 100* 50%

The humidity has been pretty steady. Just from the air. I added a spritz of water to a couple of the rocks i put in and that bumped it back to 45%. But then i cooked and it bumped up again. So i will have to be careful with that. Lol "no i cant make dinner! The bator is already at 45% if i cook it'll go up too much! Come on you arent that hungry ya whiner...."
Bahahaha i dont think hubs will appreciate that. Thankfully with summer heat comin already and him workin nights not too much cooking going on.