Handmade Turner for my next batch of goose eggs. IS this OK? - PICs-

[CityChicker]

I think that's awesome. That is totally what I need to help hand turning go faster. I would lay the eggs on their sides though if possible. Waterfowl hatch better on their sides. Where did you get those trays? The only other thing I might be worried about is the circulation under the eggs, but I still think those are a great idea.

 

[spamee34]

Hey it looks good to me

although I will say the cardboard is a bad idea but let me tell ya what I did with my chicken eggs . I used small peices of wood and put a peice of hardware cloth around the wood so the wood wouldn't slide on the bator screen and them I alternated sides with the styrofoam egg cartons and it worked great and when I got to the last three days I just took the eggs out and layed them flat on the bator floor it was good and the egg turner worked great . Duck eggs are so slippery I don't like having to touch them so I think a homemade turner works best . But I have turned them for a few years before this and it worked great tooo but the turner is time saving so you can get the lid back on sooner . Good luck!

 

[marathonmultiplesmom]

Ok, so here is the "final" design which includes a few last minute changes... of course!

Here is the new WOODEN base... made of scrap wood Cost: $0.00 and some time.

I added some cushion to make the turn easier and fit better. This should help reduce and "crashing" plus I can probably spray the rag pieces if I need more humidity. Just used an old clean wash rag Cost: $0.00

I used a sharp paring knife to twist some circle shaped holes in the bottom for extra circulation. I used a cutco brand knife - super sharp and has a lifetime guarantee so not worried about breaking the knife lol... but don't try to cut squares, that doesn't work because the plastic cracks that way.

There we go! Ready to set. I have half my eggs. The other half "should" be here today but if they are not, I will set half today because I don't want them to sit too long. I got the white chinese and some from my geese plus 8 more brown chinese on the way. I will keep this updated since I see that some people are interested to know how it goes with the hand made turner.

Ok, so I bought the little trays at Wal-mart. I think it was $2-3 for 3 trays. They are in the domestics section where they keep the foodsaver machines and drawer organizers and silverware trays and stuff. I know each store can be different though. The wood triangles are placed about 1 3/4 inches apart and we just stapled them in to a thin wood frame. I plan to lay them down for the hatch so they have enough room.

 

[newduckie]

Pretty cool.. good job on the whole thing..

 

[marathonmultiplesmom]

Ok! Wow, what a tight fit... LUCKILY, I got a hold of the person with the brown chinese eggs and they are not coming until next week. By then I will have moved 2 more over to the hatcher... because I am getting 2 extra eggs!

In case you are wondering wth that thing is in the basket with the wire attached... that is a goose size easter egg with hair gel and a temp-sensor positioned in the center. I got it to position exactly center with some paper clips and twistie ties. Not my idea, saw someone else here who did it but I couldn't find a big enough water wiggler so I did the gegg (gel-egg).

My only concern with the whole deal is that the tops of the eggs seem close to the heating unit on the outermost baskets. If the egg sensor tells me its getting too toasty in there I will take out the cut up rags to make more room between the egg and heat coil. That should take them down at least a 1/4 inch and I would be less worried.



Editing to say that I did have to remove the frame and go back to tape to keep the triangles together. My thermometer was indicating that the temp inside the egg was getting hotter than the air temp so I guess they were too close to the heating coil. I noticed this pretty quick as I have been monitoring them every 10-20 mins! So now the wood triangles are attached with tape in the same fashion that the cardboard ones were before. Now, the temps are evened out and air temp and egg temp are much closer to each other.

 

[marathonmultiplesmom]

So far so good. Temps are fine and steady. I notice the egg temp is usually .2 - .5 higher than the air temp... it could just be the thermometer but not far enough off to make me worried.

Anyhow, I did notice that my humidity is running higher than normal, especially since I had to TAKE OUT the sponge and extra dish to fit all the eggs in. I am thinking that the wood holds humidity? It was hard to keep it up before and now its running 80% "effortlessly" so just kind of an interesting observation... and totally the opposite of what was going on before. The humidity in my house is 40% usually and keeping the incubators above 60% was difficult until I discovered the cloth diaper trick... now wood??? I opened one vent to reduce the humidity some. The wood also has the incubator smelling lovely.

Tomorrow I remove 2 of the laying down eggs for lockdown... Candled them yesterday and they are so full I can barely see anything but has that "sense of life"... whatever that means. idk, sometimes I can candle an egg and its very full also but for some reason I just "know" that its a goner. So hopefully my first 2 geese hatch next week.

My thermometer recorded some spikes at 101.6 overnight, hoping that was not too high for my eggy-poos

 

[sheridangirl]

I think this is ingenious!!! good luck.