Chooks Chicks, I have an old sportsman too and had horrible hatch results my first time around because of temperature
speaking of temperature problems... sorta.. in my Styrofoam bator i have two thermometers, one used for two hatches and one brand new. One is showing perfect temperature, but one is 1.5 degree's higher.. humidity is the same. Any reason to account for this, I had the one right under the heater so i thought that was the problem, but when i moved it to the back of the incubator it showed the same temperature... talk about frustrating! I don't know which one to believe.
This is a constant problem. It can be that one of them is wrong. I could be that the one you've used before has a cardboard backing that has swollen due to humidity. It could be a ZILLION things...here's an excerpt from my Incubation Cheat Sheet:
Use 3 (yes, 3!) of the sealed-in-glass aquarium thermometers from Wally World ($1.70 each, I always have at least a dozen on hand for my 6 incubators).
Place them where it will be easy to read from the windows, and turn them in the suction cup so they're angled correctly to read the red line through your windows. They need to be on the turner, wedged between eggs so you can read what the center of the egg is, internally.
This is the only reliable way, as the thermometers that come with the incubators on cardboard change as humidity changes, and they tell you the eggs' top temperature or the temp on the floor.
Took me forever to figure out my incubator wasn't really spiking as badly as the thermometer said, but that the temp spikes were due to the cardboard shrinking and swelling from humidity.
***Recently it has come to my attention that some folks have wondered about issues with these thermometers losing accuracy. I have not experienced this, but thought I ought to post a valuable bit of info to ascertain whether you have accuracy or not in YOUR thermometers.
BYC user Jessshan8 posted this regarding evaluating your thermometer:
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