Brinsea Mini Advance Incubator

Another bonus.. Our last hatch had a power outage on day 10. Electric company said it would be many hours before it came back on. So we picked up our mini advance, took it to family down the road who still had power and got them plugged right in and never missed a beat.. Lets see a big incubator do that on a moments notice

How much did it cost?

I'm curious about that too.

We have great success with this little automatic incubator...just hatched out 7 out of 7 this morning...even though I had messed up and forgot to shut off the auto-cool down feature in final 3 days before hatch. I too quickly pull out the shells in-between to make room during the hatching.

I'm always reluctant to open mine - (I also have two) - and I appreciate all the automated features. Usually I wait until I am removing a chick and then grab shell parts at the same time.

Just now I have 7 females and on male (My breed is autosexing so I know at hatch what the gender is)--- There are still 4-eggs left--but I think it will be these 8 out of the dozen that made it to lock down.

Seems like if I don't remove chicks at a certain point - the humidity inside gets so that moisture is condensed on the walls etc. and the later chicks don't dry very fast,

How many Bantam eggs does it hold?

Sorry for your problem, that just leaves one with a sad, sick, and unhealthy feeling. I too hate to be on the line for birds that did not make it due to human failure(s). I thought long and hard on hatching chicks, I decided to do as you state, just order form the hatcheries for the birds I wish. I suppose there are those, of which I am one, that are just better off using this approach. The Brinsea brand is known for being top notch, but in all things, some just do not work as well as others.

For me, I keep birds out of love for them. As such I do not expect to ever show a profit on my flock. But if you only hatched three batches, of seven chicks each, 21 birds total, that makes them each worth/cost $7.28 each. I have paid more, but for backyard birds, that is a price that would leave one a bit… well lacking in satisfaction regarding the perceived value of your investment.

There is value, in sharing your experience. Others will have more information with which to choose the path they wish to follow.

Thanks for your post.

RJ

If you factor in that half are roos, that makes those hens pretty pricey! I'm debating about spending more to send it back and fix it. After this disappointment, it (or any incubator) will always be suspect. I have a few hens that get broody and have used them to hatch, too, just didn't have one when I needed it this time.

KFG

I always keep my temperature at 97.7 to 98.3 and never had a problem but never near the 102.0 degree.

I learned the hard way as well that you should always calibrate both the thermometer and hygrometer on your incubator. They do suggest in the manual that it should be done about every two years. but it also says: "BE CAUTIOUS OF LOW COST ANALOGUE OR DIGITAL THERMOMETERS AND HYGROMETERS. BRINSEA PRODUCTS LTD USES SOPHISTICATED EQUIPMENT TRACEABLE TO INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE STANDARDS." Which makes you sort of reach the conclusion that the incubator is far more accurate than any other device you could possibly get your low-tech-middle-of-nowhere hands on. It didn't even occur to me that it might be wrong until the second failed hatch (the first time we assumed it was due to a different problem) at which point I calibrated a meat thermometer and discovered it was running a whole 4.5 degrees colder than it was reading. Absolutely heartbreaking. So I completely agree, all incubators should be calibrated for both temperature and humidity before use, every single time.

Here ya go! go to 2:30 min in the Brinsea video.They even state in their video that they are "calibrated and checked from the factory". PolentaDragon is the fourth Mini Advance that came from the factory not calibrated. I'd make a bet that there's a lot more out there that are not factory calibrated.

Sorry, I guess I should clarify. Mine was actually an OctagonAdvance, and I had borrowed it from a friend who had - quite a while previously - used it for a successful hatch. I wasn't necessarily faulting Brinsea (except that they make such a statement out of how amazingly accurate their incubators SHOULD be) just making a point that you should ALWAYS calibrate the thermometer and hygrometer before a hatch, because it is very disappointing to take the risk and find out the hard way that it was inaccurate. Also empathizing with your loss, because it happened to me as well.

Neat!

How do you calibrate the incubator??

Just bought one and it cost me $175.00

Wow, $175.00 is pretty expensive for 7 chicks a month. I hatch about 30 chicks per month. That would require 4 or 5 of these incubators with a hatch rate of 100%. I'll pass until I'm hatching rare breed expensive eggs.

Buy the Hovabator Genesis ,about 200 dollars very reliable hatches 40 eggs. I even bought a 12 volt adapter for use with a battery(adpater for less then 20 dollars. I have had mine you 3 yrs and have hatched out several groups of chicks.Last time I had an 85% hatch on Cornish bantams extremely good for the breed.The best little incubator on the market I think.It also has a large viewing window on top.Made in America too I got mine with an egg turner too.

The best incubator I have ever used is the Genesis 1588 pre-set incubator. for fertile eggs I have had nothing less than a 95% hatch rate. Love that machine.

Just got it - can't wait to try it out!

For this incubator I just full one half of the cup in the middle
And on day 18 I full then both up to the top.
I do this with my brinsea octagon 20 too.
I fill up one resivoir and on day 18 fill up the other one
I always have good hatches with this method.