Recent content by wolverine

Hi all, well, first hatch in our home-made incubator. So far, we have three Gold Laced Orpington from six eggs, and four Welsummer Large Fowl from six eggs. As we got the eggs from eBay, and had some temperature hiccups in the early days, we're quite pleased with that. We've been reviewing the...

Hi all, came home tonight (17:00) to find some eggs had pipped (day 23) Since then, two Welsummer Large Fowl have hatched (very quickly!) and one Gold Laced Orpington Bantam, which took ages. We have one where the egg pipped, but the membrane stayed in tact under the shell; it looks a bit...

yes, I have duck tape around the top edge. I have one small vent open (about the diameter of a pencil) that feeds a 240v PC fan pushing air over the heater lamps. If I put warm/wet paper towels in there, will it not just spike then come back down?

Hi I'm on lockdown today too - day 18. Setup is as follows: - Home made incubator. Wood lined with 3/4" polystyrene sheet. - Water tray underneath slatted base, about 80% of floor surface area. - Four water containers (surrounded with mesh, with cloths in them) in with the eggs. The...

Hi all, Well - Day 5, and we're a bit more settled. Whilst topping up the water, we candled one of our Cream Legbar eggs, as the shells are easy to see through; and one of the Welsummer eggs, in our new candler (home made this evening from a Whisky bottle tube!) Picture of Cream Legbar Egg...

That's good to know, please keep me posted on how it goes. I'm hoping to get a more sophisticated candling setup than I had last time (maglite torch + hand!) so that I can take a picture. I have been noting temperatures and humidities and have numbered the eggs so that I can try to work out what...

Thanks for the feedback guys, more patience needed I think! What confused me was that I saw photos from other folks who had candling pics from day one, and at day four, you could see a perfect dark embryo with a spider-web of veins coming off towards the shell. Will leave it a week I think...

Hi all, I've had a look at the excellent sticky thread at the top here re: candling. I have another question, which is no doubt very easy to answer! Our eggs went in to the incubator three days ago and we candled them last night. Ideally I would have left them longer, but we had an temperature...

Yes, I think I will need to candle mine shortly. The temperature probe for the thermostat ended up resting on the wood of the egg turner yesterday, which gave a false "low" reading, so the heater clicked on more than it should. When I checked, the thermostat inside was showing 40-41 deg c. It's...

Hi managed to get the temperature stable between 37.1 and 38.0 deg C; and humidty around 43-45%, I hope that will be okay. Egg turner is working really well, so have added some eggs: How long should I leave them before candling? The Welsummers are dark-shelled, so will need a while I...

Thanks, that's very useful. I'm really pleased with the egg turner - thanks to some advice from here and from YouTube, it works really well! I bought a lot of 1/10rpm motors with integrated gearboxes from eBay and combined one of them with a water timer. It turns the eggs through 1/2 turn over...

Thanks, that's helpful. Yes, MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard). It is just reconstituted sawdust. I have loads of it left over that I was given a few years back, so most stuff I build is made from it! I have a duck house that has lasted two winters made from it (although it's a bit soggy in...

Hi All, thanks for all the useful information you guys have posted about incubator design, building and running. We've kept some chickens for a few years, but we've had some bad auction buys recently, and have decided to incubate some eggs. To that end, I've been reading all your comments and...