Brinsea Mini II Ex, an important tip on humidity

[Poulterrific]

I am on day 19.5 of my first attempt as using this incubator, and second attempt at incubating eggs overall. My wife and I candled the eggs and put them in lockdown yesterday on day 18.

This incubator uses a peristaltic pump to draw water from a bottle into a reservoir inside of the incubator. It monitors humidity and when the humidity falls below the set threshold, it turns on the pump and adds water to bring the humidity up to the user selected level.

The lower end models in this line use the same yellow plastic base as the Mini Ex model. On the outside of the base is a cup with a tube connecting it to the inside water reservoir. On the lower models, you add water to the cup, where it passes into the inside of the incubator through a tube.

The incubator ships with a couple of sheets of "wick" paper that you are supposed to cut and fold in half and place in the reservoir. This paper absorbs water from the reservoir and then provides surface area for the water to evaporate and raise the humidity inside the incubator.

Here's where you can run into trouble. if the wick you cut doesn't extend up out of the chamber at least 1/4" to 3/8" it might not have enough surface area to allow the humidity to rise inside to your set level (in my case 65%).

When this happens, even though the wick is totally saturated with water, the humidity level doesn't reach the set level you programmed. So, the pump continues to run even though the wick is fully saturated. The result is that the water level in the reservoir rises higher, covering more of the wick's surface area and exacerbating the problem by allowing even less evaporation from the wick's surface.

The reservoir will begin to flow into the outside fill cup (that is only used in models without automatic humidity control), and if not caught in time, could overflow onto the table where the incubator is stored or inside the incubator (very bad for the eggs).

To make a long story short, make sure you have adequate wick paper exposed above the reservoir in the Brinsea Mini II EX to allow sufficient evaporation. Fortunately I noticed water in the fill cup on the yellow base and was able to remove it and get a better wick installed before any overflow occurred.

I don't really consider this to be an issue with the incubator itself, just something to watch out for when setting it up and cutting and installing a new piece of wick paper, since the humidity control functions fine with a correctly sized and installed wick. Incidentally I think the wick paper Brinsea supplies is just ordinary blotter paper so you can probably get it locally at an art supply store if you don't want to wait for shipping.

 

[Spartan22]

I got an exact model of what you have, my first hatch on this model. I’m on day 21, I didn’t experience the same thing, I thought on lock down the humidity on the wick was the opposite maybe, I was a little concern that it doesn’t have enough humidity. I bumped the setting to 67%, on day 20 I got 3 chick hatched and another pipped that night. This morning am still waiting for the other eggs to pip or hatch, getting a little antsy the remaining 3 eggs has not showed any pipping yet and the 4th egg has not progress from the same tiny hole, I was thinking that it’s getting dry out.

My biggest concern on this was how tight and crowded the mini II ex when couple of chick hatched whereas I’ve used the Ovation 28 ex with a friend that holds 24 eggs, that one has plenty of room during hatch we normally leave the chicks in there for up to 24 hours and we had almost 100% hatch for the last 4 batches. Share your experience with the mini ex if you can, I might exchange this one with the bigger model, another thing was your fan/motor really loud? Seems like the 28 EX was much quieter. Good luck with your hatch.

 

[Poulterrific]

I have one pip now that started around midnight last night, and I can hear faint peeping coming from inside the incubator. The other eggs have not pipped yet and the one that pipped has not started to unzip the egg though it's been almost 12 hours. I have humidity set to 70% right now.

I hope everything is ok in there. My wife and I decided we weren't going to assist any of the chicks and just let nature decide. I really hope they all survive and we don't get too many roosters out of the bunch.

 

[Spartan22]

We’re at the end of day day 21, #4 chick was hatched, though I had to assist this one, I came home on my lunch break and the 4th egg had not progressed at all from a tiny cracked push-up shell since yesterday. I was concerned that the membrane has not had a poke or an egg tooth hole which I’ve normally have seen on previous beginning of hatches. I picked on the small bump on the shell, to exposed a little bit of the membrane, I’ve noticed it’s kind of drying out, so I decided to dab a little warm water on it for moisture. By dabbing some more warm water, it went a little translucent for me to see under if I can see the chick’s beak though I can hear it chirping, the beak is nowhere to be found.

This made me a little concerned, the fact that the chick had managed to make an external crack on the shell but not punctured a hole on the membrane is very unusual even for novice Hatcher like me. I didn’t want to assist-hatch since I’ve read that sometime it could lead to premature hatching and or bleeding by severing some veins that has not receded yet, but I fear if I didn’t the chick could shrink wrapped and might have not have enough energy to zip since the beak was positioned wrong. I’ve chipped away a little more shells little by little mindful of veins and bleeding risks, then I puncture a tiny whole on the membrane that’s when I saw the beak was tucked in under the wing and being blocked by wing bones away from the original pipping spot. I was able to free her beak out and placed the egg back in the incubator, so it can finish zipping on its own while I went back to work.

Tonite I came home, she was totally out of the egg and resting to fluff and thankful she made it. While I wait for remaining Marans to
Pip hopefully.

 

[Poulterrific]

We are on day 20 here and still nothing new from the one that.pipped, but two others have just pipped within the last hour. We can hear chirping on and off.

 

[Mainland]

I didn’t add water- can the eggs still hatch?