Homemade incubator hatch rates?

[happyhens]

How does your homemade bator do? Do they honestly do as good as store bought models?

 

[walkswithdog]

The models I have made now are yielding better hatch rates. But that's about half incubator and half better at hatching/understanding hatching. That came with building a bator. Now I expect most everything I put in that is from my own chickens to hatch. And in general they do, on time.

Shipped eggs are always a gamble but that's going well as well.

I'm more than content with them. Downright happy. And now I can save for the cabinet bator I really want - a Dickey...

My first did better than my bought LG. My second, Darthbator and my third the Little Red Corvette are both takes on mini-fridge bators. Little Red was an 8 bottle wine cooler. Really nice to have an all glass front on that one. I just put a big window into Darthbator and am pleased.

Usually I use Little Red for a hatcher or interim brooder, depending on need and Darthbator for the main incubator.

 

[TimG]

I have hatched two batches of eggs in my homemade incubator.

First time, 15 out of 28 shipped eggs hatched. Second time, 18 out of 29 shipped eggs hatched.

In with the first batch were also 7 eggs I collected from my flock, 6 of which hatched.

I opened the unhatched eggs in the second batch and found only 2 that had no development at all. The others were split about half and half with nearly full development (larger air space, more liquid in sac) and full development (looked just like the hatchlings).

I'm not sure whether the time and possible jostling associated with shipping would be the cause for an egg that starts to develop a chick to be unable to complete the job. Perhaps the stresses inside the egg are more extreme near the end and something catches up at that point. But, I am coming to believe that there is something about the conditions in my incubator that is causing the late failures.