I wanted to do the egg carton incubation method since my eggs were shipped, and I want to make sure the air sack develops intact/in the right spot. We have everything set up - just monitoring the temperatures before putting in the eggs. I'm using a still air LG so I was planning to tilt the whole incubator rather than just the egg cartons, so I tilted it to one side and played with the knob until it read a constant temp between 100.8 and 101 for a long period of time. I figured that was pretty dandy, so I tilted the bator to the other side to make sure the temps were still the same. Instead, the temperature dropped 10 degrees! I noticed that the little light on top of the bator stayed off as well, which is probably why the temp dropped so quickly.... I turned the knob up and the temp currently reads 98.8, so I'm not sure what would have happened if I didn't touch the knob at all.
Will I have to adjust the knob drastically every time I tilt the incubator to the other side? That doesn't sound right... the temperature in this room is always between 73 and 75, so I doubt we should have to do much adjusting throughout the incubation process. Should I just lie the eggs on their sides until day 18 and then put them in the cartons? At least then the temp should only fluctuate when we open the bator to turn them, and go back to normal soon after closing it...
Another thing - I currently have the sensor placed in the dead center of the bator, at about the height of the top of where the eggs would be. Does this sound okay? The internal sensor of the Accurite always displays a different temperature and is placed lying down in the front center - I notice it always reads a different temperature, even at room temperature (about a degree apart). Before I tilted the incubator one way, it was almost a 3 degree difference between the "indoor" sensor and the "outdoor" sensor (the outdoor one is the one I calibrated, which was 1.3 degrees lower than the medical thermometer). After tilting it the other way and the temperature dropped, the indoor and outdoor readings were almost the same, and they are now currently reading 4 degrees apart. This leads me to believe that there are temperature differences inside the incubator, extreme enough to hurt the eggs that aren't placed exactly in the middle... am I over-worrying? We've definitely hatched several batches of eggs in this bator in the past, but that was 10-13 years ago and I was too young to worry about keeping track of the hatch rates, haha.
Will I have to adjust the knob drastically every time I tilt the incubator to the other side? That doesn't sound right... the temperature in this room is always between 73 and 75, so I doubt we should have to do much adjusting throughout the incubation process. Should I just lie the eggs on their sides until day 18 and then put them in the cartons? At least then the temp should only fluctuate when we open the bator to turn them, and go back to normal soon after closing it...
Another thing - I currently have the sensor placed in the dead center of the bator, at about the height of the top of where the eggs would be. Does this sound okay? The internal sensor of the Accurite always displays a different temperature and is placed lying down in the front center - I notice it always reads a different temperature, even at room temperature (about a degree apart). Before I tilted the incubator one way, it was almost a 3 degree difference between the "indoor" sensor and the "outdoor" sensor (the outdoor one is the one I calibrated, which was 1.3 degrees lower than the medical thermometer). After tilting it the other way and the temperature dropped, the indoor and outdoor readings were almost the same, and they are now currently reading 4 degrees apart. This leads me to believe that there are temperature differences inside the incubator, extreme enough to hurt the eggs that aren't placed exactly in the middle... am I over-worrying? We've definitely hatched several batches of eggs in this bator in the past, but that was 10-13 years ago and I was too young to worry about keeping track of the hatch rates, haha.
