I set eggs on sept. 8 in home made bator

[happi752]

sept 8th i set 21 eggs in our home made incubator. its not that pretty but it works well. i candled them today and i had 6 eggs that still showed clear so i removed them and cracked them open. all were clear so i fed them to our dogs. hope it dont make them sick. lol.

we used an old stryafoam ice chect that is round. it was made to fit an inner tube for floating down salt river here in arizona.

we installed a light fixture and a hot water heater thermostat in the bottom.

hubby cut some grating to fit inside.

i put a pan of water in the bottom then put a plastice tube through the wall of the ice chest and attached a funnel to the tube so i can fill with water without opening the bator.

i have a digital thermometer inside.

we put a fan inside from an old computer we had.

hubby cut a hole in the lid and we duct taped a piece of glass from an 8 by 10 picture frame so we can see inside.

i took an egg and carefully picked open the top and emptied the egg shell then i washed it out and put antibacterial soap inside it and put the sensor of the thermometer in that and taped it with duct tape to the inside wall of the bator.

my temps are varying a little bit from 98.9 to 100.1 but all seems to be going okay.

5 eggs today i could see the hearts and blood vessels developing.

all my eggs are brown and from buff orpingtons.

i will keep this updated during the process. i hope we get a good hatch rate.

i wanted to add pics to this but i cant figure out how to do that. if you know how to add pics please explain how to do it and i will add pics of the bator.

omg 21 days is forever!!!!!!!! lol.

 

[Elite Silkies]

Keep us up to date on how the hatch goes.

 

[happi752]

oh i will. this is my first attempt at this. I originally ordered my chicks from a hatchery out of ohio. I ordered 25 and they shipped 26 back in march. I did not lose any as they were growing. I ended up with 16 hens and 10 roos. I keep the separated and unfortunately the roos killed 2 of the other roos. Then one roo was so darn mean that finally he found himself swimming in a pot of dumplings. hahahaha all the roos live with my 2 tom turkeys. the turkeys are named thanksgiving and christmas.

then about a month ago one of the hens got stuck under the nesting box and broke her neck. ohhh how that upset me. so hubby fixed that problem so it wont happen again.

we bred the buff orpingtons and those are the eggs that are setting now.

we also have some solid white hens and one solid white roo. I just dont know the name of the breed. One of the white hens went broody a couple days ago, so we tossed all 3 white hens in the breeding pen with the white roo. we should get about 30 to 33 fertile eggs from them.

hubby is tinkering with another bator right now to see if he can get it to working so we can set the eggs from our white hens in it in about 10 days.