Can styrofoam Incubators be cleaned adequately?

[loveourbirds]

i sent him a PM and asked about it again, he added this information.



It has to be in a heat proof container.

I dont wear a mask if I can get out of the room or close the bator in one breath but an organic vapor mask is recommended.

use the fan if in an incubator.

just keep it at 20 mins if doing eggs as well as equipment. allow to ventilate well for 20 minutes then use incubator

Use half the amount if you need to fumigate once eggs are incubating but you can only fumigate incubating eggs between days 5 and 14.

 

[yinepu]

i have 3 sportsmans, and i keep an extra set of thermostat switches, a fan motor, a turning mechanism, and a heating element. your incubator is never going to fail on monday morning. it always seems to happen at 10 PM on friday of a holiday weekend. i might be a bit over prepared, but i hatch around 1000 chicks a week for myself, and i hatch for other people. instead of using dual heat sources as mentioned earlier (which is a good idea) we keep backup generators. a power outage for a couple of hours usually wont affect your hatch much - but overnight may cause alot of deformed feet or other problems.

Which Sportsmans are you using?

 

[Whoops]

Thank you for the information and the directions for cleaning (fumigating) a Styrofoam incubator.

 

[enola]

I love my Little Giant (LG) incubators. I have been hatching chicks nearly year-round for 3 years. The first one I bought finally died early this summer. I have a plastic liner in my "hatching" bator. I use a bleach solution to sterilize my incubators. An afternoon in sunshine and they are ready for the next batch of eggs.

 

[loveourbirds]

Quote:
basically 1202's one is customized for larger eggs.

i get this question next all of the time, so im gonna go ahead and answer it.

- "how do you fit 400 eggs in a sportsman?" 2 trays of bantam eggs at about 160 per tray, 1 tray of large fowl eggs at about 110 (as low as 80) per tray. dont use the spacers, stack them in like this.

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
basically 1202's one is customized for larger eggs.

i get this question next all of the time, so im gonna go ahead and answer it.

- "how do you fit 400 eggs in a sportsman?" 2 trays of bantam eggs at about 160 per tray, 1 tray of large fowl eggs at about 110 (as low as 80) per tray. dont use the spacers, stack them in like this.


How do you hatch out 1000+ eggs a week if you have only 3 Sportsmans and they only hold 400 eggs each?

I used to work in commercial hatcheries where we had the big walk in incubators and hatchers (lol.. I love those beasts).. hatched out tens of thousands of eggs per day for the broiler industry... The chicks we hatch now are just for our use.. we don't sell chicks or eggs (never wanted to get that far into it).. but we still hatch out around 300 to 400 in any given month (all hand turned too.. yeah.. I need a life). Extras that aren't caponized and that we think are still nice birds for breeding are usually given away.. Lol... most months I have a waiting list of people who want nice birds for their own flocks.. but I don't want to deal with the headaches of charging for them and dealing with business taxes..
So for us I prefer the smaller coolerbators just because then I don't have all my eggs "in one basket". I know many people love their Sportsmans.. but since we're not running a business anymore I don't see the need for US to hatch out so many (or run the added expense of purchasing one or more).
With multiple coolerbators I can clean one while others are cooking.. or have a spare in case I need to transfer over eggs to do a repair (which so far we haven't had to do any at all). If the Sportsmans work great for you then by all means go for it..
But I don't think the average person will be hatching out as many eggs in a month as either you or I do... So the OP may be better off with a smaller incubator unless they really get addicted to "chicken math"

 

[loveourbirds]

i guess that was a bit misleading - some weeks we hatch 1000 (or a few more chicks) like the week before Easter, or any shows. 400x3 = 1200. most weeks we only hatch about 400. when doing the larger numbers i will sometimes use the turners from hovabators on shelves inside the incubator, using one for a hatcher with the shelves leveled out. with the custom incubator, we can fit in another 320 eggs under the turning racks. (in case i didnt mention, one is modified for larger eggs.)

 

[yinepu]

i guess that was a bit misleading - some weeks we hatch 1000 (or a few more chicks) like the week before Easter, or any shows. 400x3 = 1200. most weeks we only hatch about 400. when doing the larger numbers i will sometimes use the turners from hovabators on shelves inside the incubator, using one for a hatcher with the shelves leveled out. with the custom incubator, we can fit in another 320 eggs under the turning racks. (in case i didnt mention, one is modified for larger eggs.)

lol.. ok..
I was beginning to wonder if i had missed something...

 

[LTygress]

Back to the original post again...

DISHWASHER. I can't say that enough. And most of you are looking at me like I'm crazy. But it works.

I have a little giant with egg turner that I have used for over a year now. At first, it was clawed a few times by a cat trying to get in to the chirping chicks. Then one day it was scratched and chewed by a stray dog we had taken in, as he was trying to eat the eggs. It has gouges but still works!

And the worst part is getting all of the nasty dirt out of those gouges. That's how I discovered dishwasher love!

Obviously, you have to take everything apart. EVERYTHING. You have to take the heating wire off of the top, and take the circuit board out. And that little dial on top is usually pretty tight, so you have to be ready to pull it STRAIGHT out of the styrofoam so as not to create a hole around it.

I also took the egg turner apart, as they recommend anyway. Place all non-electronic parts in the dishwasher. The actual top and bottom styrofoam will usually lay flat across the pins on each shelf of the dishwasher. They will NOT fit in there sitting on their side. They will be too tall. Place all other pieces UNDER the styrofoam, so they get hit as the water goes up to the styrofoam and falls back down. Turn the HEATED DRY OFF, but make sure the wash/rinse temp is still on (and on high if you have those options on your dishwasher). The water temp will be close to boiling - more than enough to kill bacteria - and dishwasher detergent typically has bleach in it anyway.

If you have a lot of poop and calcium buildup on the various parts, run a SEPARATE load in the dishwasher using vinegar instead of detergent. The two will sometimes cause harmful fumes if mixed, which gets released by the steam vent on the dishwasher, so it has to be a separate load. The vinegar will loosen and wash away the hard calcium deposits from the poop. The sheer amount of time that the dishwasher spends "washing" dishes using the same water will ensure that enough vinegar comes into contact with the calcium to break it up.

The electronic parts probably won't really be dirty, and you can just wipe them down on the outside with a wet cloth to get rid of dust. Same goes with the wires themselves - but leave the circuit board completely alone. Wait until the other pieces are dry enough that they won't drip anymore, and then put it all back together.

About 3 weeks ago, I hatched out 14 chicks after cleaning mine this way. And as I type this I've got another 17 in there for about a week now, already showing development.

 

[dgermanshepherd]

I have been using Food Surface Sanitizer solution (quats) that I got from work. So far so good! Figure if it makes surfaces sterilized for human food purposes then it should be safe for the incubator?