Thought I would post some pictures of my set up.
I have a psychotic, egg-hating Little Giant. It's a piece of crap incubator, truly, but it's the only one I've got.
I added three bottles of water as heat sinks to help modulate temperature swings. I added two lab thermometers, a wet bulb and a dry bulb. The dry bulb is inserted into a plastic toy wiggle snake to approximate the temperature inside the egg. I have a laptop fan at the back powered by a USB adaptor to provide circulated air. With the dry bulb and wet bulb thermometers I can figure relative humidity, because yay, SCIENCE! That teeny tube you see is so I can add water if it's needed without opening the incubator. Finally, the eggs will be in cartons till day 18 and I'll just tilt the incubator side to side instead of opening it three times a day to rotate them by hand.
Here are the eggs. I have 21 Dominique eggs from my flock. They're all sired by the same rooster. After I build my new pasture pen, I'm going to rotate Not-Bob out and put him in isolation to give Bob a chance. I'll set those eggs after these hatch.
Here goes! Hopefully everything will go well and I'll get a great hatch rate. Wish me luck! Post your pictures too!
I'm in. I set 2 batches of shipped eggs on the 6th. One is a mixed bag Coronation Sussex, Ex Leghorn, Marans, Wheaten, and Blue Wheaten Am that had one broken egg. That one egg got goo all over the rest of the eggs so I had to wash them.The second batch is LF Lemon Blue Cochin project eggs
. I already have a couple of EE's and 5 Turkey eggs in from the 31st of March and 6 BLRW shipped with some wonky air cells that go into lockdown on the 9th. I have the turner off till the new eggs have been in 5 to 7 days in case the air cells are loose, so I'm turning the older ones by hand for now.
I have a Hovabator 1588 w/auto turner I bought in January and last week I got a used Reptipro 5000 (off ebay) that doesn't have shelves. So now I can have staggered hatches, incubating in the 1588 and lockdown/hatching in the Reptipro (which is alot easier to clean). I rigged a plastic egg flat I cut to fit about 4in off the floor in the Reptipro since the temps are graduated, cooler on the bottom and warmer at the top. (about 2.5 to 3 degrees). A friend has had small cabinet bators that quit recently so she is sending me her shelves.
I do a version of the dry hatch. It is often very dry here so I try to keep the humidity about/above 30%, adding warm water 1cc at a time if necessary during the incubation, days 1-18. I was adding water to the 1588 to get a 55-65% for lock down but now with the Reptipro I am learning that the Cabinet bators don't lose humidity much, it looks like I'm going to be locking down at about 45% and letting the hatching chicks raise the humidity level. This is the recommendation of a friend who uses Reptipros. I will adjust it as I learn I'm sure.
Here's my pictures and a little more info: out of the 40 eggs, 3 were broken when I went to put them in, so I took 3 eggs from my refridgerator that was given to me to eat. I'm not sure they will hatch because I'm not sure how long they were already refridgerated at this point since they were eggs given to us to eat. They are from the same people I'm hatching these eggs for so it was worth a shot. I marked them with an R on top so I can tell which ones they are. All the vents are open and this incubator is in the basement bedroom.
I have a hovabator 1583 forced air for incubating, first time using this one is this year. I just finished incubating duck eggs in this which are now in my old incubator that I will be using for hatching for these chicken eggs as well. My old incubator is a hovabator 1602N still air. Also I'm trying the dry hatch method as I just did with my duck eggs. I'll be able to tell more how all this worked after my ducks hatch. Hopefully I can correct any problems during this hatch that I see happened with the ducks.
Notice the temp is only 98.8 from the water wiggler in there. I turned this temp down from 99.5 because my duck eggs are already externally pipped and they are not due to hatch til wednesday the 11th. So first thing I noticed from first hatch is my temp must be running a little high.
I have 2 digital thermometers in this water wiggler and the thermometer that came with the inc is on top of the eggs. hygrometer you can see is in the egg turner. reading about 20%. room humidity on digital outside of inc is about 40%.
Now all we have to do is sit and waitand hopefully not make to many tweaks.
