I have 54 eggs in ONE incubator that was given to me from a friend. Im concerned about the crowd and buying another incubator is PRICY $$$$ nowaday. Can I take a small kiddy pool, set it up with wire "fence" on top to hold heat lamps and hatch them that way or maybe put a polyglass over the top of the pool with the heat lamps?
Unless the pool is insulated and has a way to control the temperature and humidity with your heat lamps, it probably wouldn't be the best thing. You can search the homemade incubators on here, and find pics, plans, and suggestions for homemade incubators that are under $20 to make. Until they get ready to hatch, if your temp and humidity are constant, they should be okay even if they're crowded. At hatching time it might get a little hairy, so you have until 3 days before hatch to get your other incubator set up.
Quote:Are you talking about an incubator or a brooder box? You can set quite a few eggs in the bator most likely you will have some clears that you can dispose of when you go to candle for the first time. Are you hand turning all of these? How would you try to control your temps and humidity with a setup like that? That would be your problem and not good results hatch wise.
It's a white syraphome box that my friend used YEARS ago. We have the themosat in there to keep eye on temp. It's old but it works, just I have to keep an eye on it. Yes, I hand turn all 54 of them 2x a day, from what I was told to do (This is my first time all together and hubby worked on a chicken farm in the pass but never dealed with eggs and chicks). The pool I am talking about is a plastic kiddy pool u can buy at walmart for $10 that I have seen people use for chicks but Im not sure if it's okay for eggs to hatch in.
