American serama thread!

[smoothmule]

China Doll, laying but not fertile yet

 

[cluck-cluck]

Wow, China Doll is beautiful! Is that her as a chick in your Avatar Picture? Love Frizzles, they're just awesome! I hope one of mine turns out to be a frizz..?

 

[kukupecpec]

Pooty, I never hit enter on this


It's actually quite small already, just a small styrofoam cooler.  The thermostat thingy ... well it's mechanical.  If it's registers too cold, it makes a connection, and the electricity flows, if it's hot, it stops the connection, cutting off the electricity.  The trick is to set it close to but not on the light bulb, adjust the temperature arrow and distance until you get it to stay within 1 degree +/- of 99.5.  Give yourself a week or so before setting eggs, then when you set the eggs, don't mess with it for a while   i found that when it got colder at night, I could just put a blanket on the box and adjusted the blanket as to how much of the cover I covered.  I made far too many vent holes, don't know if I've already said that, but two is enough!

so its it just a thermostat? Or is it connected to something else? Does it turn on the light when the temperature gets to low? Or is it a heater itself?

 

[rach]

Micros often times just seem to dwindle away. The best you can do for her is give her high protein food, lots of water and don't let her get cold. Cold seems to be the real killer of micros. I think often times they are small because they are just not healthy.

 

[pamc13]

Re: china doll..... She's amazing !!

 

[Gardeningmama]

Micros often times just seem to dwindle away. The best you can do for her is give her high protein food, lots of water and don't let her get cold. Cold seems to be the real killer of micros. I think often times they are small because they are just not healthy.

Thanks Rach!! I do have them in a mini coop in my basement, but it's not heated. I think it's between 55-65 degrees down there. Maybe I should use a heat lamp?

 

[Gardeningmama]

Re: china doll..... She's amazing !!

x2

 

[cluck-cluck]

so its it just a thermostat? Or is it connected to something else? Does it turn on the light when the temperature gets to low? Or is it a heater itself?

There is some kind of physics going on. The device has two screws. You cut the negative line of the light electric chord and place one end around one screw, the other end on the other screw, so it's like you interrupt the negative line (usually the ribbed or lined half of an electrical chord) with this device. When there is enough heat, it will disconnect the negative line, not allowing power to go through. To make an electrical device with electricity, there has to be a complete circuit. I'm bad at explaining electricity. But think of it as a loop, Electricity has to go up the positive side of the line and then back down the negative side of the line or nothing will happen (though the positive side can go through you and ground itself to the floor through your feet, if it's powerful enough and if you are wearing something that will ground you, like bare feet in a puddle of water,etc... you can kill yourself, right? So anyway...

So what the device does is breaks the negative line, which cuts the power to the light when it's hot enough. It doesn't require electricity to function, it is physical, some kind of material in there that reacts to small changes in heat.

The device is not the most accurate thing on earth, probably functions within 5 degrees on a water heater, however, with close placement to the light bulb (so it heats up and cools off drastically) I have found you can regulate the temperature very well. After putting it near the light bulb, and turning the system on, you can adjust the dial on the device until it reaches the temperature you want, then watch and see how well it keeps that temperature. If it gets too hot, you can put the device closer to the light bulb or reduce the dial. I usually have it to where the hole in the silver side of the device is about1/4 to 1/2" from the light bulb.

In my small cooler, I used a 40 watt bulb and a computer fan with a 5 volt cell phone charging plug. If you look at the wikipedia article on molex connectors you will see you need to hook the red line to the power line (usually colored) and black line to the usually black line of the transformer (for a cell phone) If you look at your old unwanted cell phone plug, you can read how many volts it gives, usually 5, sometimes 7. A different kind of device might use a 12 v transformer (battery charger, etc...) you might have one of those in your house as well, and can hook it up with the yellow line. The unused line you just keep out of the connections. It won't be hot when running.

You know, making these cooler-bators isn't that hard, and there are tons of directions in the coop section, under incubators that you can review. But I was confused on how the thermostat device worked myself, then realized it was super simple.

 

[Brookhavens]

This is the coolerbator I made over the summer and just hatched out my first 5 Seramas in.



I actually have 2 of them now and use them exclusively for hatching. They keep temperature and humidity perfectly. I had just plugged this one in which is why the temp is reading so low. I love my coolerbators because I plug them in and know within an hour they are ready to use. I actually watched this guy's videos on Youtube and he explains everything step by step. He even shows how to drill out holes in the hot water thermostat to make it more accurate.

 

[cluck-cluck]

Very nice