Borotto Incubators (All about)

[rayrose]

Have you complained to Premier about the problem?

 

[TwoShepherds]

Have you complained to Premier about the problem?

no, I haven't. I might leave a review after I see how my second hatch goes.

 

[rayrose]

If you report it now, they may replace it. It has a 2
year warranty.

 

[RoosterML]

I did NOT have good luck with the humidity pump on my first hatch of quail eggs. It flooded the tray at least twice, and I had to go in and drain out the water. Other times it kept running and running and putting more water in and I had to shut the pump down before it flooded. Maybe it was user error. As a newbie, I'm very willing to accept that I did something wrong, but I read the instructions multiple times and tested the set up for several days while waiting for the eggs to arrive and everything seemed stable during that time....so if I did something incorrectly, I'm not sure what it was.

Even with the pump problems I had a hatch rate of around 60-70 percent...I had more quail chicks than I knew what to do with. Most of the eggs that I lost had nearly formed chicks inside them. My hatch times seemed kind of weird...I had some hatch on the correct day and some hatch late. I did not move my 90-some eggs into new places every 5 days, so maybe the heating inside is uneven?

I set a new batch of eggs just last week--chicken eggs this time. I love how the egg tray can hold different kinds of eggs.

I am too nervous to use the pump, so I am using the incubator without it. Several of my extra back-up thermometers measure humidity as well, and so far it seems like the humidity has been pretty consistient with one tray filled with water. Supposed to fill the 2nd tray with water for lockdown.

We'll see how it goes.

I think I am going to be happy enough with the incubator. Maybe my pump is defective, or maybe I did something wrong, but I am quite disappointed with the pump and feel like it has been a waste of money, and I wish I had not bought it.

With the two trays you should be able to get humidity up to around 50. If higher is needed during lockdown they say to add
Waterer to the back part.
I had the same issue with flooding the tray trying to use the humidity pump to get humidity higher. But I didn’t follow the directions by adding water to larger rear compartment manually. What I might do is drill a couple holes in the back top of the front compartment so that the water will drip into the rear area without flooding tray.

 

[RoosterML]

no, I haven't. I might leave a review after I see how my second hatch goes.

Premier 1 is pretty good about taking care of issues

 

[TwoShepherds]

With the two trays you should be able to get humidity up to around 50. If higher is needed during lockdown they say to add
Waterer to the back part.
I had the same issue with flooding the tray trying to use the humidity pump to get humidity higher. But I didn’t follow the directions by adding water to larger rear compartment manually. What I might do is drill a couple holes in the back top of the front compartment so that the water will drip into the rear area without flooding tray.

I'm not sure if I added water to the rear compartment manually either. Maybe that was what I did wrong. At any rate, thus far, things are much less stressful and seem to be going fine without the pump. I candled some eggs last night (day 6) and most have veining. I'm keeping the tray 1 full of water and just a skim of water in tray 2 and so far humidity is hanging out in the high 40s and 50s. It's easy enough to add my own water once or twice a day, and I don't have to worry about it flooding, so I think I am just going to abandon the pump. That's a great idea about adding a waterer to the back part. With my last hatch I had to open the lid to remove chicks a couple times and adding a warm wet paper towel worked pretty well to get the humidity up quickly too.

 

[RoosterML]

Ok addressing the “flooding” issue with the Borotto incubator. I actually think this is a design failure. So if you set the humidity pump to high you will actually get the eggs wet as the water spills over the two smaller water reservoirs.
So to address this I drilled two holes in each divider. Now the water will run into the back channel without flooding the eggs. I drilled a small hole about 1/8”-1/4” down from the top lip in each reservoir.

 

[TwoShepherds]

Thanks that picture is really helpful. Have you tried using the pump since drilling the holes? My eggs are on day 16 seem to be alive and doing well without the pump. I put in 20 eggs from my flock and the only ones I’m not sure about are the 3 or 4 dark green ones that all I can see when candling are the air sacs. Lockdown is on Saturday!

 

[TwoShepherds]

Day 21 and eighteen out of the twenty eggs I put in have hatched. I thought my thermometer was calibrated and accurate, but these started hatching day 19 and were mostly done by day 20. The two remaining eggs were alive and well at lockdown, so I'll give them a little more time before I give up on them.

I had a much better hatch rate this time without the pump, but I was using eggs from my own chickens as opposed to shipped eggs so it's not an entirely fair comparison. Incubator couldn't bring the humidity up to 60-65% during lock down, but I would rather add warm wet sponges or paper towels than bail out water.

 

[AngeJD]

I have both the Borotto and Incuview - but the Lumia 16 which is FLAWLESS. Yes there's no hygrometer, but I easily just added a couple extra hygro/thermometers in. I still prefer the rolling turning of the incuview, but the capacity just isn't there, so just recently ordered a real 49 since I have had such good hatch rates with the Lumia 16. Not bothering with the pump, I don't mind manually putting in water. Have had great success with both machines for call ducks, micro serama, japanese bantams, etc. as well as much larger eggs like standard cochins. Worth the money, and still much cheaper than the brinsea.