Homemade Incubator experiment

[FLBYChickens]

Wow, that is awesome. I hope to get into the hatching of my own eggs in the future. I was weighing the cost-benefits of hatching vs buying locally read-to-lay hens. I will definitely be following this thread to see if the homemade incubator proves to be effective. That eliminates a substantial amount of start-up cost for hatching eggs. Awesome thread.

 

[HeritageHenNut]

Day 14- 4/5 are developing normally as far as I can tell. Removed one that was iffy on day 7 and has shown no further development.

I opened the egg and I had an early quitter.

Fingers crossed for the remaining 4.

 

[TheKindaFarmGal]

That's a shame. But at least the rest are doing well!

 

[camershek]

How do you get your temp and humidity to stay stable? I just made an incubator and I need to drop 10* and double my humidity and I'm out of ideas. I've added more water bowls, bigger bowls... I'm only using a 25w bulb so I don't think I can go much lower.

 

[HeritageHenNut]

How do you get your temp and humidity to stay stable? I just made an incubator and I need to drop 10* and double my humidity and I'm out of ideas. I've added more water bowls, bigger bowls... I'm only using a 25w bulb so I don't think I can go much lower.

To drop temp I added vent holes, a couple at a time until the temp was where I wanted it. Remember for the main part of incubation your humidity can be lower, it's only during lockdown & hatching it needs to be high.

 

[camershek]

I've added 8 vent holes up top and it hasn't helped yet. How big of holes do you suggest? I've gotten the humidity to go up since I first asked.

 

[TheKindaFarmGal]

Don't try to go too high on the humidity...30-35% works great, then up it at lockdown to 55-60%.

 

[HeritageHenNut]

Candled and I think we are going into lockdown a day early, not too much space left in those eggs. Humidity up to 65% and now going hands off. Wish me luck.

 

[HeritageHenNut]

Morning of day 21....we have a new member of the flock.

 

[TheKindaFarmGal]

Yes!! Have the other eggs pipped yet?