Good, small/medium incubator

[Redhead Rae]

What is a good small to medium incubator? I want it to have these features:

• 1-2 dozen egg capacity
• self turning
• retains heat well in a power outage (we get outages every few weeks)

Nice to have features:

• <$100-150
  
• temporary battery backup (don't know if it is available) willing to pay more for this feature
• self contained thermometer/hygrometer (though I want to get a extra backup meters)

This will not be my primary means of incubation. I want to mainly use broody hens. However, I want to have it in case a something happens to a broody or she abandons the nest during the incubation so I can save the clutch and so I can have two sex link hatches running in parallel so I can have mama raise all the pullets with the flock and I can raise the cockerels separately as broilers so I can keep accurate records of costs.

 

[gpop1]

If you need a custom incubator and you are good with our hands then build one.

A peltier based wine cooler would be worth considering as it can run on 12vdc making back up power easier and it very well insulated.

Most computer ups can keep a incubator warm for 30-60 mins and it wouldn't harm the hatch to go a hour at lower temp so if your power cuts are shorter than 2 hours any incubator should be ok.

 

[CKMore]

I bought mine on Ebay. I have 4 units, but 2 different brands. They sell them in 48 or 56 eggs, but you could only put a couple dozen in them if you want. You do not have to put in a full load. They are fully automatic.

Now out of the two kinds there is one kind that I did not like. The reason that I did not like it is because the heater/fan & running parts are in the bottom of the unit and the part were you place your eggs is screwed down. It's also harder to get the automatic egg turner out on day 18. Then after the eggs hatch, you can not clean them out as well as the other kind. Here is the link to the kind I did not like
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Digital...hash=item36164927fd:m:mjJde530qc_kUcMlMYdaC9A


This is the one that I like;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-56-...689241&hash=item1a30c37b18:g:qrUAAOSwmvZZbytf

Both units have heat & humidity censers with alarms- Self Turners - with front screen displays. They are not 12v ready, but we keep a generator on hand just in case we need back up.
This was my first season of using them, so I cant give a big review of yearly use or longevity. I can only tell you of my experience with them so far.