Designed and Built Incubator - Have to start somewhere!

[gpop1]

nice looking build.

Temp is always a hard to calibrate during the first hatch as you tend to over think it. 99.5 is the ideal temp but to be honest anything around 98-102 will work. After your first hatch if you calculate the days that will tell you if you are slightly cold or hot. On the first batch I would mark the eggs in the corners and one egg in the center if they all hatch with in 18hrs then its perfect if one egg is early or lagging then I would take a closer look at the design (maybe slow the fan down or add a deflector).

 

[coleco]

Thanks for the reply. I never thought about counting the time to hatch and using that as a heuristic. I did make note of everything i could observe beforehand. I set the bator to 100. I did purchase a fan speed controller but the little 22cfm fan seems to do its task. Maybe i was just feeling the temp drop when i open it (the return side is on the front) but my eggs felt cooler the further from the 'hot' side thay they get. Im leavi g it until day 7 for a progress report and more fiddling.

 

[coleco]

Day 5.

Quick candle reveals lots of veins and the possibility that all are alive. I didn't check each egg or weigh them just a random spot check. The egg that was stuck in the turner came loose, has growth, but has cracks, I will try candle wax and if it does not look good it will be culled.

Was out of town and it ran out of water in the small humidifier bottle, It also has a dish to attempt to keep it slightly more stable. Caught it early upon arriving home but will have to use my other little humidifiers during lockdown to achieve anywhere close to 80%

After this hatch I will seriously consider coating all the wood in AgriLife Lumber Seal a VOC free lumber sealant. That will affect my humidity by a lot because the wood absorbs it so fast without a barrier.

 

[melamb13]

Great news. Looking forward to more updates. The sealant sounds like a great idea.

 

[gpop1]

personally I would toss the cracked one as its only on day 5. If it was a fresh crack e.g I cracked it then wax does work but as its been a few days before you found it the chances are bacteria has already entered the egg. The smell from a bad egg is unbelievable and as the wood is not sealed it could ruin a great looking/working incubator if it permeates into the wood. ( I swear it can make plastic stink)
We had a bad egg in our incubator last week and there was over 100 eggs so it was pain to find it especially as none had cracks that we could see and the incubator is on a constant cycle.

When it comes to raising humidity you can always add a sponge as the extra surface area will make the humidity sky rocket. Or judging by your design you can use air speed to raise the humidity. A small tray after the heater where the air is moving will act like a large tray of water in a area of low air speed.

I made a auto humidity chamber on my incubator but I was interested in your usb personal humidifier. Do you have a link to that?

 

[WalnutHill]

If you use a professoinal grade ear thermometer, you can take eggshell temperature readings which will quite accurately reflect the internal egg temperature. Take the temp around the widest part of the egg while it's in the turner; the best time is when it's tilted as far over as it goes.

 

[coleco]

excellent tip about the ear thermometer!!! I will toss the egg! yuck!

link to the silly little humidifier that i purchased.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V07QH0Y?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

 

[gpop1]

excellent tip about the ear thermometer!!! I will toss the egg! yuck!

link to the silly little humidifier that i purchased.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V07QH0Y?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

thanks for the link I think im going to have to get one to play with it.

 

[coleco]

It's silly to think that the tiny thing could be used for personal humidification it says on the details 'humidification area: 5 cubic feet' that's a very small area lol. Because I made the incubator out of wood , for example, it struggles to make a cubic foot of air at around 100 degrees reach a relative humidity above 40 something% for me even with it directly in the heater box feeding 22cfm of air. The wood just absorbs too much moisture. I purchased 2 more of the humidifiers to set directly in with the eggs during hatching. Putting a small tray of water helped a minimal amount due to the small butter dish lid that i was using. Besides a cool misty effect i can't see any benefit to using the product as advertised lol. I make sure to run distilled water, when its plugged into a usb its on, when its out of water it shuts off completely, when it is on it has a blue light illuminating the water.

I didn't mean to go so far into designing an humidity thing i was just braindead thinking of how to make a tray area for water and I search web retailers for everything before i buy or build. I didn't think in my wildest dreams that i'd find a "mini humidifier" for 12$ perfect for my needs.

 

[melamb13]

It's silly to think that the tiny thing could be used for personal humidification it says on the details 'humidification area: 5 cubic feet' that's a very small area lol. Because I made the incubator out of wood , for example, it struggles to make a cubic foot of air at around 100 degrees reach a relative humidity above 40 something% for me even with it directly in the heater box feeding 22cfm of air. The wood just absorbs too much moisture. I purchased 2 more of the humidifiers to set directly in with the eggs during hatching. Putting a small tray of water helped a minimal amount due to the small butter dish lid that i was using. Besides a cool misty effect i can't see any benefit to using the product as advertised lol. I make sure to run distilled water, when its plugged into a usb its on, when its out of water it shuts off completely, when it is on it has a blue light illuminating the water.

I didn't mean to go so far into designing an humidity thing i was just braindead thinking of how to make a tray area for water and I search web retailers for everything before i buy or build. I didn't think in my wildest dreams that i'd find a "mini humidifier" for 12$ perfect for my needs.

Do you control the humidifier or just let it run until it shuts off? Looks like it only gets 6 hr run time off of a bottle. What egg turner did you go with? Any updates on progress?