Finally have my homebuilt Incubator up and running

[scotter]

It's a work in progress, and it's my first attempt at a hatch. I still need to build three more wire egg holders for the incubator (you can see the temporary egg cartons on the top tier). Also need to install window in the hatching compartment (freezer section).

So far everything has gone fairly smooth except that on day 2 of the first set I pulled the probes to calibrate the controllers and forgot to shut down or monitor the heat. the cabinet shot up over 104 for about 20 min. don't know if I poached them or not but will candle in a few days.

The incubator hold 90 eggs.

 

[sumi]

If it was only 20 minutes they should be o.k. If the core temperature of the eggs got to 104* you can toss them, but the core temperature takes awhile to rise and fall, so fingers crossed and best of luck with your hatch!

 

[scotter]

All the eggs are in the wire baskets now and air circulation should at it's best. I noticed the humidity has dropped and have added a water reservoir in the bottom.

 

[scotter]

Here is one of the baskets I built for the incubator. It's just some hardware cloth screwed to a pvc pipe. The white strips are weatherstripping to help pad and secure the eggs. The screw by my hand is the tipping lever, it also keeps the baskets from rolling all the way over.

 

[scotter]

I candled a dozen eggs from the first set that I was worried that I cooked and found ten of them were clearly fertile and I could observe heartbeats in at least 6 of them !!!

 

[Pancholoco]

You built it in automatic egg turners?

 

[scotter]

No they are not automatic. we just tip the baskets back and forth several times a day. The ends of the pipe act as a pivot. It will be easy to set it up as an auto turner at a later date, but for now we are enjoying the direct involvement in the process.

 

[Pancholoco]

I like this one

 

[scotter]

That is nice. I would need three of them assuming they would fit. Is it a commercial model or home built?

 

[Pancholoco]

Homemade one. I would like to build one of this, unfortunately I just found this picture surfing in the web.