TheBajan
Songster
Good morning!
We have a small flock of 8 hens and a rooster. They were two years old in March and as winter came to a close we were surprised to find that they still are not laying much. Two of our lazy hens stay on the roost till about 11am! The solution of course was to comb the internet researching how to build an incubator. Fast forward a couple of weeks and our incubator is done. I've collected eggs from my lazy birds and also gathered some from a neighbor who has his own flock.
The problem I am having is that my temperature varies by about 3 1/2 degrees from the top tier to the bottom tier. This is a forced air incubator that pushes the hot air down and has a return at the bottom to draw the return air back up. I'm not too savvy on thermodynamics but I think that if this test hatch doesn't work out well, I'll rebuild it [upside-down].
I've set the eggs due to the fact that some of them have been collected over the course of this past week and I couldn't wait longer. I distributed them strategically through the incubator to study the hatch rate in the various corners and levels. Anyone out there with suggestions to even out the heat distribution? I added a UTH just above the return air vent hoping to increase the heat in the lower tier but I don't see a difference. I'm out of ideas.
Note that the temp you see in the picture is because I had just set the eggs and it was still warming up. I have it set at 100 degrees +/- one.
We have a small flock of 8 hens and a rooster. They were two years old in March and as winter came to a close we were surprised to find that they still are not laying much. Two of our lazy hens stay on the roost till about 11am! The solution of course was to comb the internet researching how to build an incubator. Fast forward a couple of weeks and our incubator is done. I've collected eggs from my lazy birds and also gathered some from a neighbor who has his own flock.
The problem I am having is that my temperature varies by about 3 1/2 degrees from the top tier to the bottom tier. This is a forced air incubator that pushes the hot air down and has a return at the bottom to draw the return air back up. I'm not too savvy on thermodynamics but I think that if this test hatch doesn't work out well, I'll rebuild it [upside-down].
I've set the eggs due to the fact that some of them have been collected over the course of this past week and I couldn't wait longer. I distributed them strategically through the incubator to study the hatch rate in the various corners and levels. Anyone out there with suggestions to even out the heat distribution? I added a UTH just above the return air vent hoping to increase the heat in the lower tier but I don't see a difference. I'm out of ideas.
Note that the temp you see in the picture is because I had just set the eggs and it was still warming up. I have it set at 100 degrees +/- one.
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