I bought the thing which was advertised as a "best buy" & well worth the money & after 4 failed hatches I found A) It wasn't ventilated enough & B) it said it was running at 37.5 C & really it was running at 35 C! So I had chicks pipping & dying because their lungs were not developed fully enough to breath air, but they had huge heads & tiny bodies. & C) the humidity was a nightmare! I even increased the digital temp upto 40 C! For all it did, I may as well have not bothered. Whats got me more annoyed is a wooden box with a heatlanp, normal light, hot water bottles in the bottom ( the water heats up & helps stabilize temps) small fan & a towel on top is doing a far better job! Don't bother buying a digital, just knock together a wooden box, make sure its not going to light fire in the night - I've got all my heatlamps secure & protected by strong metal racks for bl**dy hanging baskets that I was gonna chuck. I mean, what the hell! Why do incubators cost so much? I've just knocked one together in 2 hours & its so far great! Great temps, great ventilation - now onto humidity. Sadly I had 6 Rhode island red x warren eggs a few days into incubation when I released the incubator was crap. Now they are in the home made one & nice & toasty. My brinsea Eco broke to the moment the eggs went , so as a back up incubator, that failed. Should I increase the temp slightly to make up for the low temps in early development? The eggs may be dead anyway - they've been under a heatlamp in the brooder with a quail chick, so I'm pretty sure they've been getting too hot or cold. I've been moving them about when I feel they are too hot or too cold, but I've always let all my eggs incubate right through unless I know they are dead. Its thanks to that incubator I have a lone quail chick, out of 24 eggs 9 pipped, 6 died after pipping, 3 hatched, 2 died. The one remaining chick is now about 10 days old & very fat. It really likes attention, I just can't put it down. Poor mite, I've told DH it'll be running around the house when its bigger. He didn't look chuffed.
