I thought this would be a good topic for a thread. Myself I love building equipment and finding new cheap ways to efficiently hatch and raise poultry. So I figured I'd start us off, lol. I took and old 60's refrigerator and converted it into an incubator, turning a old pile of junk into a useful tool. My "Frige-U-Bator" has 2, 41 egg turning trays in it, and a hatcher tray. I used the heating elements from two old styrofoam incubators that I had, a wafer thermostat from ebay, 4 80mm computer fans, and a pan for water. I have 2 fans at the top with an element, and two fans at the bottom with an element and the water tray. I used a dual probe, digital thermometer from thermo-works, and so far I have very good hatch rates. Another idea that I implement is to use my cellphone camera as a candle light. I took an old toilet paper roll, cut slits in the top about the thickness of a tooth pick (so a lot of them) in order to flair out one end to form fit to each egg, then turn on my cell camera flash light, and set the non cut end over the light. This requires a camera with a flash and a flashlight app, but that's becoming common place. Now weather or not I'm the first one to come up with either of these ideas, I'm not sure, but I know that I personally had not heard of either of them before, and haven't since. But I can say that everyone who comes into my room and sees me pull new born baby chicks out of an old fridge, gets a kick out of it and usually cant help but to comment, lol.
