Janoel Incubation Experience

[Heron's Nest Farm]

I am embarking on my first Janoel incubation.

I purchased this from China for $125. It holds 48 eggs with and auto turner.

It has 2 water channels for controlling humidity. It took me 2 weeks of experimenting to figure out how to control humidity.

It has a control panel that shows the minutes to egg turning (all the way to the left) under which the days in the incubator is displayed. It shows the humidity and temp in Celsius.

As you can see it has a clear view bottom and 4 observation windows on top. I was careful to choose the model with a serial number and the real Janoel name on it. Others do not have the observation windows. I have cut the box it came in and covered it with colored paper (I have to look at this thing 356 days a year!) and put it on the bottom for increased insulation.

I used 2 additional thermometers to figure out the temp. My cheese thermometer and this little one that also reads the humidity. I will be removing the cheese one and just leaving the little one in now that I have learned that when it reads 100 its at 99.5 internally.(cheese thermometer read 99. Used average) My Janoel will be set at 37.8 celsius.

 

[Heron's Nest Farm]

Going into Lockdown!

Here is the divider I created. I used plastic canvas as a recommendation from a BYC member (wish I could remember who so I could give you props!).






I constructed the outside fence for stability first. I secured the edges with zip ties.

I added the center dividers. They extend up about 1/2" from the ceiling grate. I needed three dividers this time, but you can make as many as would fit in your incubator to accommodate your separation needs.

Eggs in with hollow bottom crates for humidity.

Notice I made the sides shorter so I could (and all the little children I've invited over) can see what's happening!

In 2 hours I will fill the bottom trays and upon advice of place a cup of water that reaches the ceiling (so no chicks drown) inside for the higher humidity. Not so hard to keep humidity high here in Oregon!

LOCKDOWN!

 

[WVduckchick]

WVDuckChick

Maybe you can recommend dome ducks for us. Tell us about your favorite breeds and why?

Well, I really don't know! My sister in law has always had chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, etc, but I never really wanted any. Then she had some extra roosters and talked me into taking some. She also brought me 3 ducks because I've always said her ducks were my favorite. Ling story shortened, I lost those ducks to the snow storm this winter but decided I wanted to hatch some. So I found some Swedish eggs nearby, looked up the breed and thought they would be lovely for me. So that's what I have lol!

I would say to look on one of the hatchery sites to get some ideas, alot depends on your use for the ducks.

P.S. My last one that pipped the hole in the wrong place hatched on its own today. Was out when I got home from work. Either on his own or the last one in there with him helped! Yeah!!! I'm done... With this round.

 

[stevestrong]

Here's a picture of my goslings. They're 5 days old today. I have a very cute little one (on the right side of the picture), he looks healthy, just really small.
It's my first hatch so I'm very excited. I have 15 babies, I hope all of them survive.

 

[Heron's Nest Farm]

Hi Heron!
Great info, I am really enjoying keeping track of your incubation.

I am running 6 of these units. I am not sure what your humidity is like being winter in the US, here in Aust and summertime the air is very dry. I was running my incubators at an average of 45%-50% and then up to 70% for hatching. Was getting quite low hatchings (under 50%) and what chicks we met were all born very wet, it was taking them 24 hours to start to fluff up.

I too got sick of the alarms going off all night (with 6 of them I was not getting much sleep!) So I dropped the alarms one evening down to 25% and then...hmm...forgot to put them back up the next morning. It was over a week before I remembered - and in that time we had hatched one lot of chicks - 85% hatch rate and chicks dry and fluffy within half an hour of hatching.

I have now put through 3 lots of eggs at the lower humidity and we are still going at 85% hatch rate (and my eggs have been coming from the same place all the time).

Just thought I would mention it - depending on your out of incubator conditions you might want to let your humidity drop a few %.

Keep the story going! Can't wait to see what results you get.

Best wishes, Cate

This is GREAT info. Unfortunately I didn't see it until today and I go into lockdown tomorrow! I have to admit that I am terrified of things not going well. I have only hen hatched and chalked things up to nature. My humidity has been up and down. I follow the inside humidity reader I bought online that reads about 8% higher than the Janoel reading. I certainly hope that I have a great hatch. I have several children stopping by Sunday afternoon in hopes of seeing some hatching.

Today I checked all the eggs and they are all moving. Not sure about the sizes of the air sacs, but they have grown steadily.

Tomorrow is lockdown. I have created a partition for the Janoel that I can move for different sized partitions for different hatches I will photograph and share tomorrow.

I hope nobody drowns or is shrink wrapped!

Thanks to those of you kind enough to chime in with your experience.

I used 2 thermometers I found and split the difference since they were so close. I hope they have been accurate. The both have read about .5 in variation and I have used this and NOT the Janoel reading.

 

[Heron's Nest Farm]

I too have a janoel but I don't know if the automatic egg turner is working. When it turns it tilts to the opposite side like it's supposed to but then it goes right back to where it was. Does anyone else have this happening??

I was concerned about this too, so I contacted the company. They assured me that the turner rocks the eggs back and forth stopping just short of where it was.SO as the day progresses you will see the eggs tilting towards the other direction until they are all the way to the other side..

Run your janoel for a day and come back 6 hours later and you will see it's in the middle or close, Come back another six hours and it's beginning to tilt the other way. I am about to find out if this is sufficient or not. My eggs hatch Sunday. I believe the complete sort of swish it does with the eggs before resting should be sufficient.

 

[WVduckchick]

Testing a hygrometer is easy. Take a little cup of some kind, even cap from a coke bottle. Fill it with salt. Add just enough water to make it slushy. Wet, but not enough to dissolve the salt or have any floating water. Put the hygrometer and salt slurry into a Ziploc bag at room temp and wait about 6-8 hours. Should read 75% on the hygrometer. Its scientific, that's just the humidity of salt slurry, so it should be accurate, once the bag acclimates.
Do NOT let the hygrometer touch the salt! If your hygrometer is adjustable, you can make it match. If not, just note how high or low it is and you're done!

 

[chickster5003]

Well as you know duck eggs take 28 days and chicken 21. Well I had my chicken eggs below the incubator as the incubator is about a foot off the ground. Well I washed my hand before turning the duck eggs and well the lid of the inubcator and crushed two of my RIR eggs

. Well the ebayer is extremely kind and I emailed her and i just have to pay for shipping. Well long story short she has other breeds two, so instead of Getting two more RIR I got 2 Amercauna's and I added 2 black Austropulars to my order so in all I'll be incubating two rouens, two RIR, two Amerecuana, and two black Austropulars. Can you tell I'm OCD

 

[WVduckchick]

We need an ECA meeting... Egg Candlers Anonymous lol! I have it bad! And I have to say that the one of mine that I know I candled the most, because it was in the easiest space to get to, is my first pip! Granted, its probably coincidence, or just luck, but I'll take it lol

I ordered the Spot Check from Brinsea's website and they shipped it right away so it should be in my mailbox any day now. Was a little disappointed that they had $10 minimum shipping charge on a $19.99 item! But I ordered anyway.

 

[WVduckchick]

My first little guy made it out~!

This one pipped second, but came out first. The first pipper is still working on it.
How adorable is this? LOL