Home made cabinet incubator

[KentuckyMom]

Ok, now I'm not just intrigued; I'm laughing too. Walnut Hill/VikkiP you have just potentially taken "talking to yourself" to a whole new level!

 

[WalnutHill]

I reset my password and got my iPad logged into the WalnutHill account. So no more drama, sorry!

 

[KentuckyMom]

Bummer! Thanks for making me smile anyway!

 

[WalnutHill]

I moved my thermometer/hygrometer to the bottom of the incubator, in front of the duct, to measure the temperature at the hottest spot.

With a hot spot temp of 102 with RH humidity of 45 and a cold spot temp at the middle front of 99 with RH 48, I think the airflow is about perfect. My humidity is up today as I am making maple syrup and generating a lot of steam.

One of the things I did not like about other incubator, coolerbator, and foam tabletop incubator designs is that there are hot spots in front of or below the heating elements, whether lamps or elements. By enclosing my heating element into a ducted stream of air, the heat is very well distributed in the column of air before it begins to heat the eggs.

I would like my hatcher trays a bit cooler, so I will observe what happens in the first hatch and then decide whether to rearrange my drawer layout or install air deflectors or modify the ductwork so that the outlet is higher in the column.

 

[lazy gardener]

Vikki Walnut, I've got your design saved to a separate file, and will study it well when I get around to making my fridge-a-bator. If you do any tweaks, I hope you'll post them! Shucks, I wish you'd not deleted one of yourselves. I was looking forward to some fun there.

 

[WalnutHill]

Day 13. One of the eggs I couldn't be certain of a couple days ago was clearly a blood ring today. That makes 22 of 25 fertile have made it this far. Air cells are where they should be, but my syrup making bringing the house up to 65% makes it difficult to keep the even warmer incubator down at 45%.

Friday is lockdown so I will probably hold off on boiling down any more syrup until this incubation is complete. It's still too cold out to open the windows or doors for ventilation.

 

[WalnutHill]

Update, as the humidity was approaching 60% and beginning to condense inside after adding 41 eggs and boiling down 10 gallons of sap into syrup, I made a 3/4" vent hole in the top at the front (fan is at the back) to reduce humidity by pulling cooler, drier air in through unsealed corners and door edges while pushing out warm, moist air through this hole. While the humidity quickly dropped, it affected the temperature quite dramatically. The heat at the duct outlet rose to 104F, indicating that the heating element was operating much more. So I plugged the new hole and opened a similar size hole near the bottom, along side the water pan, to draft in some fresh air. The temperature immediately stabilized and the humidity is back on track.

I was surprised by this behavior as the temp sensor is halfway down the cabinet in the back, in a low air speed area of the cabinet.

Nearly all commercial incubators have vents on the top or near the top. If I use my LG 9200s again, I will seal the top holes and open similarly sized holes in the front or side. They can double as a water channel fill hole.

 

[WalnutHill]

Day 16. Of 25 fertile, 22 still growing strong (the three fails were all blood rings before 7 days). A couple look to be slightly behind others in development but it may just be that some of the eggs from our 2 1/2 year old hens are ridiculously large. I hope the extra volume of albumen does not lead to wet chicks. Hatch date is 3/30 if all goes to plan, and I will be setting turkey eggs on Sunday.

Air cells are progressing nicely, turners are synchronized so it's easy to see that they are all working, and the air stone makes an excellent humidifier.

Second tray has 41 eggs to hatch 4/9 and 4/10. There will be lots of fuzzy butts coming my way!

 

[WalnutHill]

Late day 16. With turkey eggs coming in, I moved my first set to the hatcher drawer a little early. I marked the air cells and laid them so that the greatest dip in the air cell is uppermost. There is still some air cell growth needed, so I am maintaining normal incubation humidity for another day or so before official lockdown starts.

To modify humidity, I just set the digital controller to a higher humidity setting, and the aquarium pump runs the air stone longer, atomizing the water into the air stream from the duct. This seems to work really well, and since I hung the pump from a ribbon, vibration is minimal. Five minutes after closing the incubator after moving all the eggs from the top tray and marking and placing in the hatcher drawer, then moving eggs from the second tray to the top tray, quickly candling each on the way by, the humidity is back up to 38% and temp is back to 93F.

Here is the link to my hatch cam: http://hatchcam.walnuthillfarmmi.com:8000/ Expected hatch 3/30 but I think some of those smaller green eggs will pop a day earlier.

It's not very good software, but the price was right (free). It just quits running now and then.

Second set of 42 is at day 5 for some, day 6 for the other. At least half show fertile.

 

[WalnutHill]

While I have 23 eggs in lockdown in the hatcher drawer and 41 in the turner, I loaded in 45 turkey eggs at room temperature (65F). Temp dropped one degree for two hours and is now right back where it was. Humidity was back up within 30 minutes. This design works!