Are there any really cheap ways of incubating eggs? first time incubator needing help!

[LizzieJ]

Hi i have been getting fertile eggs from my ducks but up til now havent incubated any of them, would like to try but dont have a great deal of money to splash out on one of those posh incubators you can buy. i have quite a few questions about incubating too i hope someone can help.
1. Is there a good and in-expensive way of building an incubator? which is the best way?
2. ive read alot about temperature and humidity, what are the optimum temps and humidity and how can i tell? (thermometer obviously but humidity? how please?)
3. Is is right that eggs need to be turned 3 times daily apart from the last 3 days?
4. roughly how long do duck eggs take to hatch?

As you can tell this is for sure my first time at this!
Thanks in advance for any help offered
Liz x

 

[mattblackburn]

there is a lot of info on the site. I built my incubator for 20 dollars with a water heater thermostat and an old cpu fan and crappy ice chest. My humidity is measured from a thermometer with a built in digital humidity reading. But two digital thermometers will read different temps so i guess get as close as you can.

I have live examples of last batch with the homemade incubator viewable at

http://mattblackburn.net

via a live feed. There is a link to my youtube channel on the top will show you my little homemade budget special (recording of parts of the last hatch.) Friday morning you can come back to the site and hopefully will see some live hatching from the ice chest as I intend to stream it live. And we are candling good as of today with moving babies inside 15 remaining eggs out of 17 started and due to hatch by friday.

regards

Matt

 

[Judy]

In the sticky in this (Incubating and Hatching) forum there is a link to an article on homemade incubators. Here is the link:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/homemade-chicken-egg-incubator-designs-pictures