I got everyone excited...building an incubator!!

[Quail_Antwerp]

My mom and I both homeschool...I have a brother and sister still at home that are 13 and 9...and I have 2 kids of school age myself...One of their first projects for this year is going to be building a homemade incubator (with parent supervision of course!)

I was planning on just buying one next payday, but I did a search here and found that some of you built your own, so I thought I would give it a go. My daughter asked if she could help, so I thought it would make an interesting project for the kids. Ran it by my mom, and we decided on getting together each Thursday.

Right now we are getting together the supplies we need to make it. We have some of it already.

We told the kids that as soon as we have it all put together, and have the temp figured out, we will be getting hatching eggs. My kids went so far as to say "we can hatch something every month!"

don't think my hubby would go for that! LOL

Our next project, while the eggs are in the 'bator, will be to build the brooder box, and I have already begun drawing the plans for that!

Any tips ya'll have, I would appreciate. I have bookmard Miss Prissy's 'bator instructions and am using her supply list to go off of.

 

[rooster-red]

You'll enjoy it!

I made one from a 48 qt cooler and have incubated in it 4 times this year.

 

[SGM]

We've made two different types in the past. One was a styrofoam type and one a plywood and we only used Emu eggs in the plywood so I don't really remember if it worked or not. The emu never hatched, but that wasn't a big shock to us.

Anyway, the styrofoam worked but was never as effecient as our hovabators.

My hubby is planning to try building one again, this time with a much larger and thicker styrofoam cooler. We still have the ol' plywood bator so we're just taking parts off it to put on the foam one. Hope it works. I'm still probably going to buy one and maybe rely on the homemade as a hatcher.

 

[katrinag]

You can just use a rubber maid tote for a brooder box. It will alot easier to clean.

 

[Jessika]

I am considering building one too. Sounds like fun to do with the kids.

How big of a deal is the turner for hatch ratio? Has anyone modified the homemade ones with a turner? Or am I missing a thread that already talks about that? Still rather new here.

 

[Jenlyn9483]

Joann's cottage built missprissy's chic bator and uses an automatic turner in it. She does well. I also built missprissy's bator, I dont have a turner but i do have the fan and mine is WONDERFUL! I love it, just built a hatcher to go with it so i can stagger hatches and my first two eggs hatched in my hatcher just this morning. The hatcher is the same as the bator except it doesnt have a fan.