Hova-Bator 1582 Questions

[donnavee]

First, I always buy my chicks as babies and have never thought too much about hatching any myself?

But, someone just gave me a Hova-Bator 1582 Thermal Air incubator that has only been used once to hatch some duck eggs. Soooooo, now I'm thinking maybe hatching some eggs might be kind of fun.

This model does not have a fan or auto egg turner and I don't want to spend a lot of money on my "free" incubator. So, I'm wondering what you think would be the most important addition - a fan or a egg turner?

 

[robnms]

You should get both a turner and a fan, you can get a computer fan for as little as $3.00 at a computer repair shop. They might even just give it to you, make sure you get one that has the 4 mounting holes in the corners, this makes it easier to mount. Next get an old cell phone charger and strip the wires and then wire it to your fan, you might have to try to figure out which wires needs to be hooked up. There will be 3 wires on the fan and 2 on the cell charger, on my fan I had to use the red and black fan wires for it to run, like I said, just swap wires untill the fan works and don't worry about burning it or messing anything up. It either works or it won't!!! You can buy a turner for $43.00 on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-HOVA-BATOR-...818?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19c0f58742. Or you can do it the old fashion way if you're home all day. Good Luck.

 

[Jessiewoodard57]

A fan will help in stablizing the temp so that would be my first choice. Egg turning gets old so it won't be long before you'll want the egg turner.

BTW Hatching is very addictive you will soon find that out,

I cleaned took the eggs that did not hatch out of my bator set the lid (still plugged in)on the table cleaned and reloaded the bator and set the lid back on it. Soon as my cochins finish hatching should be tommorow I will clean it and reload it with the rest of the eggs. Setting RIR and Black Australorps 90 eggs total. Since the bators hold 42 eggs each I will have to hand turn the remaining 6 till I cull at the first candling.

 

[Larry342516]

How many times a day should a person turn the eggs by hand? Thanks for your help

 

[hildar]

How many times a day should a person turn the eggs by hand? Thanks for your help

A mother hen will turn her eggs about 4 to 5 times a day. However the incubator companies say once a day you should turn them. I personally did my good hatch 2 times a day. Our big incubator up at the big property we hatched out 300+ eggs this year and we have an auto turner it turns them every 8 hours.

 

[Larry342516]

Thank you for answering my question. Much appreciated.