Hello all,
A month or so ago I borrowed a friend Janoel Incubator and I was so excited about my first hatch. After waiting 21 days we did not have a single hatch (we had one pipped egg, but the chick died). I was devastated. After some investigation with the incubator I discovered that although the information that was being displayed on the outside of the incubator was correct...What was actually happening inside the incubator was wrong. I came to the conclusion that this incubator was rubbish and after feeling like the worst person in the world (for killing these little chicks) I vowed NEVER to try and incubate chicks again.
Needless to say my husband has encouraged me to try again. After searching for a decent incubator to buy I found that they were all REALLY expensive (which I decided wasn't worth it due to the small number of eggs I wanted to hatch) and decided to do a little research into making my own.
I have my polystyrene box, light, fan, thermometer (with humidity % display), water dish and I have a thermostat on the way. I have several test runs and so far it all seems to work great.
Here are pics of the bator so far.
I have an awesome thermostat coming which will take care of the temp for me. I brought a thermometer with built in humidity % so about $20 just so I have a rough idea of how the temp is going but the thermostat should take care of that more accurately for me.
So this is just a light n easy polystyrene box I got from a lady that lives down the road.
I just cut a section out of the top and taped a piece of glass to it. I got the glass from the top of an old fish tank.
This is how it will look when it's all running with eggs in it.
So this is the fan I brought which arrived today. It cost me about $14 from ebay and it actually a USB fan which you're meant to plug into you computer and it runs of that. However I thought I would try my luck and see if it would run off my iPhone wall charger charger and low and behold it sure does. I like the idea of this fan as well because it's low voltage it doesn't give off that much heat so it will help with maintaining the temp in the incubator. It also means I don't have to rewire any computer fans to fit 240v which made it even more appealing. (The idea of rewiring stuff scares me and I think it could be quite dangerous) You can also see the thermometer I brought off ebay here too.
This is the light bulb and fan. I found it hard trying to find a lamp kit. So I started looking for bits and pieces around the house. My son had this lamp from iKea which we never used and, like everything from ikea, required being put together. This meant is was easy to take apart. It cost about $16 when we brought it.
Like I mentioned above I will be adding a thermostat (the kind that plugs into the wall, you set the temp and then plug the heat source into it). I will also be adding a manual egg turner...Which I will make out of a removable plastic refrigerator egg holder some wire and a piece of dowel. Will are planning on trying this little baby out in the hopes to have chicks hatching on Mother's Day.
If there is any other advice you have for I would greatly appreciate it.
WOW...that was a long post. Thanks for reading.
A month or so ago I borrowed a friend Janoel Incubator and I was so excited about my first hatch. After waiting 21 days we did not have a single hatch (we had one pipped egg, but the chick died). I was devastated. After some investigation with the incubator I discovered that although the information that was being displayed on the outside of the incubator was correct...What was actually happening inside the incubator was wrong. I came to the conclusion that this incubator was rubbish and after feeling like the worst person in the world (for killing these little chicks) I vowed NEVER to try and incubate chicks again.
Needless to say my husband has encouraged me to try again. After searching for a decent incubator to buy I found that they were all REALLY expensive (which I decided wasn't worth it due to the small number of eggs I wanted to hatch) and decided to do a little research into making my own.
I have my polystyrene box, light, fan, thermometer (with humidity % display), water dish and I have a thermostat on the way. I have several test runs and so far it all seems to work great.
Here are pics of the bator so far.
I have an awesome thermostat coming which will take care of the temp for me. I brought a thermometer with built in humidity % so about $20 just so I have a rough idea of how the temp is going but the thermostat should take care of that more accurately for me.
So this is just a light n easy polystyrene box I got from a lady that lives down the road.
I just cut a section out of the top and taped a piece of glass to it. I got the glass from the top of an old fish tank.
This is how it will look when it's all running with eggs in it.
So this is the fan I brought which arrived today. It cost me about $14 from ebay and it actually a USB fan which you're meant to plug into you computer and it runs of that. However I thought I would try my luck and see if it would run off my iPhone wall charger charger and low and behold it sure does. I like the idea of this fan as well because it's low voltage it doesn't give off that much heat so it will help with maintaining the temp in the incubator. It also means I don't have to rewire any computer fans to fit 240v which made it even more appealing. (The idea of rewiring stuff scares me and I think it could be quite dangerous) You can also see the thermometer I brought off ebay here too.
This is the light bulb and fan. I found it hard trying to find a lamp kit. So I started looking for bits and pieces around the house. My son had this lamp from iKea which we never used and, like everything from ikea, required being put together. This meant is was easy to take apart. It cost about $16 when we brought it.
Like I mentioned above I will be adding a thermostat (the kind that plugs into the wall, you set the temp and then plug the heat source into it). I will also be adding a manual egg turner...Which I will make out of a removable plastic refrigerator egg holder some wire and a piece of dowel. Will are planning on trying this little baby out in the hopes to have chicks hatching on Mother's Day.
If there is any other advice you have for I would greatly appreciate it.
WOW...that was a long post. Thanks for reading.
