[How To] Incubate with the Janoel12

[BrandonsBirbs]

Disclaimers: only hatching one batch, only hatching quail, using the auto turner.

Okay, so I heard this incubator is a bit rubbish so I was very curious on how well it would perform. It cost me £53 from Amazon UK.

Those in the UK probably know it's pretty hard to source incubators, especially ones that aren't over £100-£200. That's why I wanted to see how this incubator would perform, you can buy this incubator even cheaper on eBay and such.

I had 15 coturnix quail eggs delivered in person by a quail farmer. Cost me £17 (expensive), only paid so much since I wanted the freshest eggs and least distance travelled through the post.

Before putting them in the incubator they only sat about one day, but on their sides as I was not at home (she did deliver them 2 days earlier than planned).

I purchased 2 hygrometers/thermometers since I knew the inbuilt thermometer would be awful. Ran the incubator at 37.5c degrees (100f) prior to receiving the eggs and knew it was going to be a bit risky as I hadn't perfected the temps due to them arriving so early.

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Day 18 @ 7:00 at least six have hatched, I think it is eight though! Out of 10, so far pretty good!

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Day 17 @ 18:02 our first chick hatched!

Day 17 @ 21:00 we now have 3 Chickie's!!!!

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Day 17 @ 23:00 four chicks!!!!!!

 

[pennyJo1960]

Looks like you did fine I have one have used it many times
for all the flaws I have had a great hatch rate .

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Maintaining Temperature

I quickly learned that this incubator cannot maintain a continuous temperature. As I knew this prior to receiving the item I knew that I would want to try different approaches on how to help maintain it.

Firstly, I used towels to cover the sides and bottom and even the top. Overnight I noticed the temperatures had increased a lot and proceeded to take the towel off the top. After that it maintained its temperature much better - but not well. At this point my incubator was on the floor but raised on two towels and was staying between 37.0 and 38.5 (pretty big differences!)

My next approach was to use some polystyrene I had. It is about an inch thick and I created a box and lid for the incubator. I thought this would work really well but honestly it wasn't much better than the towels. It actually kept making the incubator overheat which somehow kept confusing it's inbuilt thermometer system.

Once I took the lid off it was much, much better and maintained a pretty consistent temperature, roughly 37.2-37.8 which is not too bad honestly. It was still on the floor at this point but on top of 1-inch thick polystyrene. (Polystyrene is also known as Styrofoam).

I was in the process of converting a small wardrobe like cupboard we have in our front room to have a shelf for my new incubator (not the Janoel12) and a place at the bottom for a reasonably sized brooder. I decided to crack on with it and ended up putting the Janoel12 on the shelf. It is surrounded on three sides by the polystyrene still (but loosely) and on the bottom too. However I have not kept the front nor the top of the polystyrene on the incubator.

With the door shut it was still ranging from about 37.3 - 37.9 but once I kept the door open it's stayed almost perfectly on 37.4-37.7.

So that's my method for using this incubator effectively.

To calibrate inbuilt thermometer to your own: Hold down SET, scroll up to CA (using the + button), press SET, change the amount based on what your thermometer reads.

For example: my thermometer says it is 36.5 I will change the CA to -1.0 as it is saying 37.5 on the inbuilt thermometer.

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Maintaining Humidity

Now this was a completely other kettle of fish but once I figured it out it was easy to perfect.

So I started around 45-55% humidity based of a websites description I found. I don't believe this is the right humidity to use now though. I would recommend to stay between 30 and 40% humidity. For me that means I can dry-hatch as our humidity in the cupboard is around 30-35%.

This incubator is pretty hard to have a good humidity with if you're just putting water in the bottom, so how did I maintain my 45-55%? Bottle caps! I had some old vitamin bottles (weird thing I like to horde is plastic containers/bottles). I used two and filled them up, after two hours checked on the humidity and it was 53% and stayed that way for hours. 12 hours later was still 48% (they are reasonably deep lids).

For somewhere between 30-40% I would recommend using one bottle lid (you can test before putting eggs in). Now I don't mean one bottle lid from a coke bottle, it's got to be deep but narrow - the surface of the water is what makes the humidity not the amount. So deeper means it will stay that humidity for longer! I only had to fill them up once every 36 hours or so.

For maintaining humidity at lockdown (60-65%) I use a lid from a small container (10cmx10cm) and filled it up. Only about 8mm deep but lasted at least 30 hours at 62%. To fill it up I gently screw a paper straw down into the incubator thru the vent hole and aim above the container lid then use a funnel to slowly fill it up.

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

(possible to move this thread to incubating section?)

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Managed to save the chick by placing them inside a cup which I had lined with socks. It "forced" them to stand up and within a couple of hours they could walk (they were a bit poorly balanced but figured it out). Now he is perfectly fine. Last one also hatched whilst this was happening! So all 10 fertile eggs hatched!!

 

[BrandonsBirbs]