My food deydrator/incubator

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Delmar

Delmar

Songster
9 Years
Nov 26, 2010
699
4
121
Indiana, a dozen miles from MI
I have been promising for a while to post photos of my food dehydrator turned incubator. So here we go.

I had been looking at building an incubator for a while, looking at designs, etc when I looked up and saw the Ronco food dehydrator that my wife bought at goodwill a couple years ago, and thought "hey that might work!"

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It has a heating element in the bottom.

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I drilled a hole in the wall of the bottom tray and added a thermostat.
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Then I added a computer fan to the top tray and built a cage around it to keep the chicks out of the fan. It is hard to see in this photo, but there is a serving dish on the tray right below the top one. It is round with four sections around the outside and a round one in the middle that I cut out to let air pass through. This is my moisture reservoir. I use a turkey baster to put water in it through the top tray. The white bax you see is the sensor portion of an indoor outdoor digital thermometer/ humidly meter that my wife brought home. this was a really good addition to the project. It is wireless and I can monitor temp and humidity from my computer desk.
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Delmar, that looks great..I'm thinking that you and my husband should meet. He loves making things work, and changing things into something else, or just making something that will do. He made me my candler. It works great!
 
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My wife keeps telling me not to worry if I have to make permanent modifications to it, but my favorite thing about it, is that it is still a perfectly good food dehydrator. I also have a reproduction 1858 Civil War revolver and you have to clean those black powder guns with water, so I have also been known to use it for a gun dryer.
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Wow! That is such a neat idea, and so clean looking. I keep picturing chick jerky though because my mind is still stuck on "food dehydrator". Way to be creative.
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Hi I am wondering the temperature inside your incubator without the fan and how many trays you are using to keep the eggs away from the heating element? I was kind of in a bind and had to get these eggs set before they went bad, so I thought about this process too, however I don't have a thermometer handy and was wondering the temp without the fan. The dehydrator is the same model you have. I have set a pie plate with water under the unit and the unit is sitting on top of the pie pan, and I have been misting the eggs, to keep them humid, and turning them a little. This is my first time and had just found 2 large nests with over 30 large brown eggs in them. I was able to get 30 eggs in the top tray and have all the lower trays in to keep it as cool as possible. Please advise if you can. Thanks. I hope this will work.
 
i have a food dehydrator like that and it was gona get it's heater ripped out of it.... but my brother saved its life and gave me an heating element out of a hova bator
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good work
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I just started incubating 29 eggs in an older model excalibur 301 food dehydrator. It's holding it's temp very well and in a few days time we will know if it's working or not. I do have a small plate with a bunch of wet paper towels at the bottom as I was worried about the humidity since this is a food dehydrator... but my ambient humidity is 30 percent so should be fine either way
 

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