First Incubator - Maticoopx30 - Practice?

[newchickychick]

Boy, do I feel like a dummy! I plugged it in, got everything set up... and the egg turner was not letting me test it! I had reset it to day 1. Turns out, it wouldn't let me test until day 5. I guess the egg turner just doesn't work too early in? Regardless, it was SUPER simple setting up. And so far the temperature and humidity have been PERFECT for day 1 for the past hour! We must have it in a good room. We're going to be keeping a close eye on it as we move in and out of the room, as it's a low traffic room but still sometimes we go in/out. Just to be sure humidity/temperature don't spike or drop drastically. How fun! I'm going to enjoy playing with it until we get eggs one day.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm curious to know how y'all started getting ready for your first ever hatch?

First, read the operator's manual. For your first hatch, do what it says to give you a base.

Calibrate your temperature. Factory settings are not always that accurate. Make sure you are operating at the correct temperature.

Determine what humidity you will use during the incubation phase. Adjust and run the incubator to achieve that humidity. Determine what humidity you will use during the hatching phase. Adjust and run your incubator to achieve that humidity. I'm not familiar with how your incubator manages humidity. Often you need to let it stabilize a while if you spill water or such. But learn how to adjust the humidity up and down. Mine is totally different from yours.

Different humidities work for different people, even with the same model of incubator. There are different reasons for that, mainly we all have different conditions where we live and incubate. Some people do great at 30% humidity, some at 50%. Generally, for lockdown you want it higher, say 65% as an example. So learn how to adjust your humidity. My suggestion is to start with the humidity mentioned in your operator's manual and evaluate your hatch. My recommended hatching humidity was 45% but by trial and error I settled on 40% as best for me.

I've had a 100% hatch rate with shipped eggs, I had a 20% hatch. Both sets were from the same shipper. Some shippers do a great job collecting and packaging the eggs, some don't. Sometimes the post office or shipping company handles the eggs gently, sometimes not. There are reasons some shipped eggs hatch great while others don't. You are in Virginia. Maybe go to the Virginia state thread in the "Where am I! Where are you" section if this forum and chat with your neighbors, maybe somebody close has hatching eggs you can practice with. Or post an ad in the "Buy-Sell-Trade" section of this forum to try to find a supplier near you. Put your location in the thread title to attract the attention of the people you want to see it. Call your county extension office and see if they know anybody near you with fertile eggs to sell. You can use shipping eggs to go through your learning curve with your incubator if you want but they can be expensive and you never know how many will hatch.

It can take a few days to calibrate your temperature and learn how to adjust the humidity but it should not take that long.

Did you just go for it when you got an incubator and just adjust/experiment as it went on? Did you run it for a few months without eggs to watch how the humidity/temperature worked (our current intention!)? Did you test run it once and then dive in? Did you start with really "cheap" eggs (if bought)/gathered eggs? Or did you dive in on a splurge-y breed of eggs? Did you opt for gathered eggs or shipped for your first hatch?

I'm always open for any/all advice. This is a "for future thought" sort of thread, but I'd like to be as best prepared as possible for eventually planning our first ever hatch! We want to be sure we're prepared and handle it responsibly. We know accidents can happen, but we want to be sure we've done everything in our power to be knowledgeable and not cause any undue damage or stress when the day comes that we do our first hatch. We figured shipped eggs may be one of the most reliable ways for us to find a couple of certain breeds we're curious about for next year. But would a shipped egg hatch too much to handle for a first hatch? Is a handful of months' time even enough to really prepare for our first hatch, or should we be set to at least a year before actually following through with our first hatch?

Thanks ahead of time for your experiences and advice!

 

[newchickychick]

First, read the operator's manual. For your first hatch, do what it says to give you a base.

Calibrate your temperature. Factory settings are not always that accurate. Make sure you are operating at the correct temperature.

Determine what humidity you will use during the incubation phase. Adjust and run the incubator to achieve that humidity. Determine what humidity you will use during the hatching phase. Adjust and run your incubator to achieve that humidity. I'm not familiar with how your incubator manages humidity. Often you need to let it stabilize a while if you spill water or such. But learn how to adjust the humidity up and down. Mine is totally different from yours.

Different humidities work for different people, even with the same model of incubator. There are different reasons for that, mainly we all have different conditions where we live and incubate. Some people do great at 30% humidity, some at 50%. Generally, for lockdown you want it higher, say 65% as an example. So learn how to adjust your humidity. My suggestion is to start with the humidity mentioned in your operator's manual and evaluate your hatch. My recommended hatching humidity was 45% but by trial and error I settled on 40% as best for me.

I've had a 100% hatch rate with shipped eggs, I had a 20% hatch. Both sets were from the same shipper. Some shippers do a great job collecting and packaging the eggs, some don't. Sometimes the post office or shipping company handles the eggs gently, sometimes not. There are reasons some shipped eggs hatch great while others don't. You are in Virginia. Maybe go to the Virginia state thread in the "Where am I! Where are you" section if this forum and chat with your neighbors, maybe somebody close has hatching eggs you can practice with. Or post an ad in the "Buy-Sell-Trade" section of this forum to try to find a supplier near you. Put your location in the thread title to attract the attention of the people you want to see it. Call your county extension office and see if they know anybody near you with fertile eggs to sell. You can use shipping eggs to go through your learning curve with your incubator if you want but they can be expensive and you never know how many will hatch.

It can take a few days to calibrate your temperature and learn how to adjust the humidity but it should not take that long.

I really appreciate all this info, thank you!

I've been checking it every 30 minutes and logging temperature and humidity so far since getting it set up about 7 hours ago! Both thermometers (I calibrated the extra one!) read at a steady 99.5%. This has not fluctuated at all yet.

The humidity started at 55% and stayed incredibly steady, but I've been toying with it to try to learn how to drop it. It's down to 53% from starting to toy with it about half an hour to an hour ago. I'll definitely keep working on how to figure it out! My husband was excited to come home to the incubator. I hadn't told him I was buying it yet. He told me to go ahead and order some eggs as we'd have time before they arrive to toy with it, but I'm worried anything short of months of preparation is too quick. I'm the worrier and over-preparer, he's the "got everything you need? only one way to find out: experience!" type. Ahaha! Though I'm quite happy he's on board with chicken math at least.

Finances aren't really an issue for us in the matter, it's more so me worrying if something goes wildly wrong I would hate to not know how to properly handle it - though I'm not sure how much more could go wrong with shipped eggs vs. gathered-in-person eggs. I do know the detached and saddled air cells can be an issue, but are there any other issues that are really specific to shipped eggs that would make us want to avoid shipped eggs for a first hatch? I'm about to dive headfirst into a night of nonstop educational videos on hatching (ones I haven't watched yet, anyways) before I let him tempt me with chicken, errr, egg math.

 

[newchickychick]

We do also have a generator though, so power outages won't be an issue (thankfully!) for our hatches ever. We had some seriously awful power outages over the last year (spent a whole week in the house with it being 10 degrees! Oof!) and we got a generator when we got chicks. So we do have that as a bonus.

Is it wise to have two incubators, or a second that's a different brand, in case something goes wrong with one? So many variables to take into consideration.