Omgoodness! How exciting. Can't wait to see how successful your hatch is.
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I have built many incubators and temp is the absolute hardest thing to regulate. And, no, the DIYers on YouTube do not tell you how hard it is to regulate them.The heat pad should probably last, as long as you aren't getting it wet. If the heat pad gets wet then who knows what would happen. But just having a small amount of weight on the heat pad shouldn't hurt it, because they would have to anticipate making them be able to endure people laying on them when people hurt their backs etc; people use heating pads then.
But I don't understand also how to regulate the temperature well. This seems like the hard part.
I've been experimenting with some homemade incubators also, and that seems like the hardest part. Like right after I turn it on, the temperature seems to look OK. Then I come back 5 hours later and see a temperature like 104.
Its pretty frustrating.
The China made incubator that I'd ordered only goes up to about 92 degrees and didn't work right. Then I see people on Youtube are doing homemade incubators. Although people on Youtube tend to over dramaticize their successes and not their headaches and failures.
I was so surprised! I almost killed the poor things! I can't wait!Omgoodness! How exciting. Can't wait to see how successful your hatch is.
You can say that again, I have to check on the temp. like every hour.I have built many incubators and temp is the absolute hardest thing to regulate. And, no, the DIYers on YouTube do not tell you how hard it is to regulate them.
I have built many incubators and temp is the absolute hardest thing to regulate. And, no, the DIYers on YouTube do not tell you how hard it is to regulate them.
You can say that again, I have to check on the temp. like every hour.
Watching how your experiment goes. Years (and years and years) ago, my father had an egg route and bought eggs from a local Amish farm. One week he bought a case of eggs, brought it home and sat it near the furnace floor grate. A few days later he heard a sound coming from the box, opened it up and there were 3 baby chicks. Seems that the Amish guy had the case in a room with a wood stove - and this case was too close to it on one corner and Dad finished up with the furnace.
Needless to say, he didn't try selling any of those remaining eggs. lol
I use a MagicFly Janoel 12. It's one of the really cheap incubators. It runs like a dream for me. I don't have anything bad to say about it. The lowest hatch rate I ever got in it was 80%. I also incubated a ton of eggs in it. Out of 186 eggs last summer I ended up with 179 birds. I also jam packed the poor thing when there was an emergency. I had 30 eggs I there, when the incubator can technically fit only 12. (if you wonder how I had so many, a guinea hen abandoned her and her sister's nest in the middle of the night) I got 29 of those eggs to hatch, and when I got them they were on day 8.
Used to be 6 and now it is 3 because of the heat change were I am at.