Homemade Incubator Find

[samara]

Hi all,

Well, I took your suggestion and got a worm box from wal-mart, actually they gave me both of them. It's so funny, all of the sporting goods people had heard about my call and were expecting me, even the clerk in in the garden center knew the 2 huge styrofoam coolers in my cart were for the lady who called about the worm boxes! LOL! So, I got them home and involved my sister-in-law's bored "grandmother in waiting" (my sis-in-law's baby is 7 days overdue) in helping me put my incubator together.

I'll work on getting pics, and keep you posted!

Samara

 

[Southern Chickens]

What is the inside measurements of the boxes from Walmart?

 

[Ricky]

Yeah I bought a medium size reptile tank,a heat lamp,a thermometer on 98.7 F to 101.0 F and a hydrometer that is on 60 with a bowl of water and 5 muscovy duck eggs.A brown shirt under the eggs,.turn the eggs every 3 hours but at night I turn them at 11:00 PM and then I turn them at 6:30 AM and at 7:10 then I go to school turn themat 3:00 PM and so forth every 2 hours until 11:00 again.I have a thin black shirt over the top to keep in humidity.I havent seen any progress and its been 2 days.Should I be worried?

 

[aran]

oh man this is too cool...i work in a hospital as a resident ( for another15 weeks then im ALL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) so i wonder if i can grab a couple of their styrofoam boxes.

 

[samara]

OK,

So the worm boxes are cool, but I didn't get mine tested before my eggs arrived, so I ended up going out and buying one! I was concerned about getting the heat with the light bulb just right, and didn't know how I wanted to electrify the light bulb, lol, if you know what I mean. I had bought an outdoor floodlight into which the dimmer I bought was to screw in between the light bulb and the socket, but it didn't fit (because of the knob on the dimmer). So, I thought about using a lamp or something, but like I said, I didn't finish in time.

But the store bought one doesn't look tons more sophisticated than mine, just the heating element goes around the entire lid, for even heating.

So, I have these two worm boxes, with ventilation will they be good brooders??
Samara

 

[jimnjay]

They should make good brooders, or if you want to get into staggered hatches, you can set one up as a hatcher. That way you can set a few eggs at a time and keep one unit clean and move the eggs at day 18 to one that has the humidity all set and ready to go.

 

[spock78]

great thread. I will try this soon.

 

[redneck]

I thought I was a master scrounger, but I have to say I like the idea for using the worm box from Walmart. I started tearing a 12V ice chest apart for my incubator. I called Walmart and I can pick up two worm boxes tomorrow. Great forums and amazing people here..........