Hatching in a turner...

[rebelcowboysnb]

I use cartons in my turner. You don't need to cut the bottoms out, they hatch fine without it. I hatch with the 18 egg cartons propped on the wall so they are at a 45 degree slant. Eggs are not upright but they don't roll around.


Also I use the rubber liner for shelves that looks like net to line the bottom of the incubator. $1 stores usually have rolls of it.

 

[Dirty_South_Chickens]

Yeah I got 22 eggs on Thursday and worked on making the incubator after I would get off work. I got it built, working and gave it 24 hours of run time and they where in by Saturday. Its not perfect but its not finished, I just wanted to see if it would even work before putting more time and energy into it. So far the only thing I have changed since I started was ordered and installed a bi-metal thermostat because the hot water heater thermostat I did the mod to was all over the place. So far I am really happy with my incubator warehouse bi-metal thermostat...well worth the $22 (with shipping) from Amazon.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Yea, looked back at your picture. A hot water thermostat will not work well that far from the light. It needs to be almost touching it. Nothing wrong with spending the extra coin for a better thermostat though if you can.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I use cartons in my turner. You don't need to cut the bottoms out, they hatch fine without it. I hatch with the 18 egg cartons propped on the wall so they are at a 45 degree slant. Eggs are not upright but they don't roll around.

Do you think still air versus forced air might make a difference in whether you need to cut the bottoms out for better ventilation? Just a thought.

I recently realized you were in Dade County, although I've been seeing it for quite a while. Can't blame me not noticing that one on coffee. Was it that Georgia didn't want you or you did not want Georgia? I'm not clear on that.

 

[Dirty_South_Chickens]

Yea, looked back at your picture. A hot water thermostat will not work well that far from the light. It needs to be almost touching it. Nothing wrong with spending the extra coin for a better thermostat though if you can.

I looked at lots of pictures and read a lot of threads about the hot water thermostat and felt I had it nailed down but it seemed to have a dead spot from 99.0 to 100.0 and it would either run 101 to 102 or 97 to 98. I am running out of hair to pull out as I'm getting older so just paid the extra...even though the idea was to see how cheap I could build a working incubator.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Quote:
It may help cutting the cartons on a still air. I'm not sure cause I dont use still air incubators an dont recommend them.

There is a new road across lookout mountain but until the mid 1900s that mountain cut is off from the rest of the state. Tn an Al were our gateway to the worild an even the reast of our state. We have never had much use for the state an claimed independence around the civil war an applied to rejoin the union is the 1930s I think it was... All symbolic if course. We are still the black sheep of the state an are still petty cut off from them geographically.

The State on the other hand has also had no use for us of cared what we did till Atlanta started having a water shortage. Our proximity an disputed access to the Tennessee river is all they want out of us.

Even with all that we were surprised to find that we were removed from the state on the state quarter.

 

[Dirty_South_Chickens]

Still air does seem to change the rules some but I did install a dual fan system from a broken Xbox 360.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Quote:
Nothing wrong with that. I have built incubators out of just about everything an they all work but the more you spend the easier it gets so everyone has to chose what balance they are willing to work with.

 

[matlock585]

With my last one, which was the first one I made, I had the thermo mounted on the wall with spacers to hold it about 3/4" away. It was probably 2" from the light bulb and I had a fan in there too. My temps swung by 8 degrees. Constantly up then down in a cycle. I set it to run 96 for the lowest and 104 for the highest. I felt like the average of those two temps was 100 and that should be the internal temp of the egg. I had really great results with that. I hatched 12 eggs out of 19 I set the whole summer. This year I tore that one down and rebuilt it into a bigger cooler. I used some of the hardware cloth and made a frame that went around my light bulb. I zip tied the thermostat to the wire cage and this one doesn't fluctuate at all. I didn't do the modifications to the thermostat either. It is maybe 1/2" or so directly above the light bulb.

Hey Rebel cowboy... does the christmas light brooder heater actually work fairly well. I'm somewhat interested in that idea. My worse hangup is that instead of worrying about one light bulb blowing, I'd be worrying about 50.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

It finally died two months ago. I need to go see what failed but I got about a year out of it I think. I turned it up from 110 to 140 a week before it failed so it may not have failed if I had left it at 110.