Digital incubators (warning rant)

GD91

Songster
6 Years
Aug 1, 2013
504
42
118
UK
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.
somad.gif


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.
roll.png
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom