Brinsea Ovation 28 EX

I've owned a Ovation 28 EX for a short time now. At first I hated it because of the crudy display. a two line display with no backlight, and no count down timer.
This is the forth Incubator I've used in the last few months. I've worked at a farm for two years taking care of chickens. So I'm not new to chickens, but somewhat new to my own chickens.

I started out with a NR360, and the fan burned up on the second hatch. plus it was a very cheaply made in China, with lots of hot/cold spots.Also only turned one direction.

Then I got an Rcom Max 20, and pro10+. The display was very nice, truly a one button press and forget.
Problem was their case design was poor at best. The 20 had heating coils that melted into the case, and the 10 case was so thin, it would not hold the correct temps. (I keep my house in the high 60's)

So I thought I should try the Brinsea. Bottom line, two hatches at 100%! Wow, I love this thing.
Very thick plastics, very nice design for air flow and perfect even temps.

I had read some reviews/comments on the 28EX about humidity issues, so before I even received the unit, I went to the dollar store and bought some sponges. see pics.

I ran my hatches at 99.6*f. Humi at 44% and on day 19 66%. First pip on day 20, and all hatched by day 21. Humidity held with in .5 % for both settings(till chicks raised it to about 75%).

I used 4 Govee's to calibrate the temp/humi. A friend that works at Genentech took them to work and calibrated them.

Clean up takes about 15 minutes and is very easy.

At some point down the road I'll add a pipe, as to connect the two water troughs.

I highly recommend the Brinsea Ovation 28 EX. if the had Rcoms display, they'd be 5 Star!

We love this incubator, we had had 100% hatched the last 4x we’d been using it. The clear panel makes it easy to see the hatching eggs and the control panels are easy to use.

After losing many eggs early in incubation and several hatches in lock down because of too high humidity early in the process with the cheap incubators I bought last year, I cracked open my wallet and bought this incubator.

This thing is AMAZING! I set it up and within an hour, the humidity and temperature were perfectly spot on and haven't wavered more than .2 degrees C or 3% humidity off the chosen setting. It even works well above or below the ideal temperatures mentioned in the manual, which is wonderful. We depend on gas heaters to keep our house warm and they have to be manually adjusted, which means the temperature in the room they are kept varies a lot.

I am using this incubator as my starter incubator for staggered hatching since it can maintain low enough humidity without any fuss or bother. I check the water reservoir 3-4 times a week and only touch it to add eggs or move them into my lock down incubator.

I went from hatching nothing, to getting a 70% hatch rate. I set 20 eggs, 15 made it to lockdown (5 were early quitters), 14 of the 15 hatched.

I only have two quibbles with the incubator:

1. Expensive, but well worth the price
2. Not big enough, I wish I shelled out the extra $100 to get the 56 egg model.