GQF 1266 - acrylic door help

[PetRock]

The GQF I bought is only a hatcher and has 3 hatching trays so that is all that i have used it for. I have been using a small styrofoam incubator to actually incubate but I would really like to upgrade my incubator to a GQF or a Dickey My first batch of eggs was not very successful but I had a bacteria problem and lost most of my eggs throughout the incubating period to that. That was a bit of a bummer but after that set I took everything apart and did a thorough cleaning.

I am running a test hatch with 12 eggs. Mine is the GQF 1550 Hatcher with 4 metal trays and one waxed cardboard (?) tray at the bottom. I am manually turning the eggs by raising the plastic egg tray up on one end, several hours later placing it flat in the tray, and then raising the other end of the tray. I do have a Hovabator but I am hoping that this works for incubating because the cabinet fits lots more eggs! Now if I can just figure out how to modify it with automatic turners. I don't think that DH would be happy if I decided that now I need a cabinet incubator. Of course, if I can find an excellent deal on one like I did with this hatcher, he might be fine with it!

 

[launius]

LOL. That's how I ended up with a cabinet hatcher too...ran upon a deal I couldn't pass up. I have the 1266 and apparently it was for emu eggs so it only has 3 trays. It still holds a bunch of duck eggs though

I also was thinking about trying to incubate in my hatcher but I haven't tried it yet. I can't wait to hear how your test hatch goes. I am pretty sure I saw somewhere on here how to modify a hatcher to have automatic egg turners. If I run across that info again, I will certainly let you know.

 

[PetRock]

LOL. That's how I ended up with a cabinet hatcher too...ran upon a deal I couldn't pass up. I have the 1266 and apparently it was for emu eggs so it only has 3 trays. It still holds a bunch of duck eggs though

I also was thinking about trying to incubate in my hatcher but I haven't tried it yet. I can't wait to hear how your test hatch goes. I am pretty sure I saw somewhere on here how to modify a hatcher to have automatic egg turners. If I run across that info again, I will certainly let you know.

Thank you! I would appreciate that! I've been searching the threads but not come up with anything yet. I thought about putting my Hovabator turner in it but I would have to modify the power cord so it could fit through a ventilation hole. I might divide up the eggs and leave half of them in the egg tray that I am turning by moving the ends up and down. Then put the other half on their sides and just hand turn them. Or maybe I'll do that with the next group of practice eggs.

 

[Strader]

I bought Lexan sheet 3/8 thick and exactly the size I needed on E-bay. then sat it on my door that I made of melamine, Drew around it and routered a groove 3/8 deep to set the lexan into. Then used sabre saw to cut large piece out for window. used some adhesive from Home depot for plastic/wood. worked awesome. attached my hinges and good to go. link to the guy I purchased from below. I went with lexan because the R -value is a bit better than any other plastic. I also went with 3/8 thick, but 1/4 thick would be fine also. I feel like there's not much heat loss

http://www.ebay.com/itm/lexan-polyc...348?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ec8eafe54

 

[dyoungen]

I have a HOVABATOR, I think. Bought it used so not sure what name brand but one of the windows was warped so I just took a piece of plastic from a candy dispensor, fit it to the hole where the original window was and glued it in. Works great.