Has anyone had success with these numbers??

[Timba]

My home made incubator has temp ranges from 100° to 95° with a cycle of 9 1/2 minutes before the bulb turns back on. This appears to be the best numbers I can achieve with a water heater thermostat. Has anyone had success with these numbers?

 

[howfunkyisurchicken]

Thats a pretty significant temperature swing. Perhaps you could wrap the incubator in a blanket to help it hold heat a little better? Adding more eggs will probably help too, my incubator always holds temp better when it has lots of eggs in it.

I've messed up severely while incubating, so its possible you'll get some chicks. But, your hatch rates are probably going to be terribly disappointing. Good luck.

 

[Timba]

Thanks for your input. As a result I have chucked the hot water heater thermostat. I changed the wattage of the bulb from 60 to 15 and also added a dimmer. The temperature holds steady at 99. I think my chances have dramatically increased.

 

[chickkrzi]

Something else you may try is to use zip lock sandwich bags filled with water and lay in bottom of incubator. Should help stabilize temp. I use 2 of them in my LG when I have less than a dozen eggs to hatch.