Incubator for birthday = SO MANY CHOICES! Help!

[StrawberryHouseMouse]

Welp I got the good news today. After my hubby, Karl.. sat and watched me try to make my own incubator out of pretty much nothing. He surprised me with the idea he had for me starting months ago. When I started my pitiful search for silkies lol

He told me he wanted to buy me a really nice incubator for my birthday which is in July. So! I need to find one to point him in the direction of. I really like cabinet incubators that have egg turners and hatchers. I also love having ones I can watch. With digital gadges to read instead of having to guess or try to focus on one of those tiny temp thermometers.

So here is the goal! Help me find an incubator that is made just for me!

something nice thats going to have racks for hatching as well as turning. If it boils down to it and I have to turn them by hand that would be fine but I would prefer a good egg turning system. And I would like it to be a cabinet model. Since I have a lot of friends here in my area that would love me to hatch eggs for them.

 

[gabrielle1976]

I think if you want a cabnet one lots of people here have Dicky;s and seem to like them . I dont know much about them , If I could choose anything it would be a 40 egg brinesea probly with turner and such .

Happy hunting

 

[chickens4me]

Lucky You!! Have fun choosing.

 

[kelseygirl707]

Well I've heard good things about both the GQF Sportsmans and Dickies, but Only use a Hovabator myself, good luck and Happy Birthday, what a nice Hubby you have!

 

[StrawberryHouseMouse]

The question I have about Dicky's bators is it has 3 egg trays and only 1 hatch tray. How do you fit eggs from 3 into 1?

 

[Mahonri]

You stagger the hatches.

Set eggs in tray one.

8 days later set eggs in tray two

8 days later set eggs in tray three.

Two days later you put eggs from tray one into the hatching tray.

6 days later you put more eggs in tray one...

You get the picture.

(BTW I say 8 days cuz you want to have a little more hatching time... so you could put a new tray in every 8 days for months and months)

I only own a hovabator 1588 w/ auto turner... BUT can you tell I've dreamed about moving to my 8 acres and putting a LARGE coop with multiple runs....

 

[StrawberryHouseMouse]

lol ah I see that makes a lot of sense! Thanks I would have never guessed to do that.

 

[B. Saffles Farms]

I love the 3 GQF Sportsmans we have. We have the clear doors on ours. Ours arent digital, but after we got the temp and humidity set the first time, we havent had to adjust it since. In 9 years of having all 3 of them weve never had any problems with any of them. The sportsman has 4 trays, one is used for hatching and the other 3 are turning trays. If you do staggerd hatches you do 1 tray at a time setting your eggs once a week that way you just move the tray that is due to hatch to the hatching tray. If you dont do staggerd hatches, like if you was to fill the bator up on one hatch, on day 18, just flip the switch to turn the turner off and then you have 4 hatching trays.

 

[LilDucky85]

I just got mine for my birthday! This is my first hatch so everyone was like what is she going to do with an incubator??

Congrats on your new incubator, and Happy Birthday to you!!

 

[StrawberryHouseMouse]

I see. I will have to look into GQF then cause it seems to have some things the Dicky's hasnt got to offer. I looked at the two and Im still deciding. What do you do about the humidity of the hatching eggs? If they are all in the bator together, how do you change it for hatching cause I know it needs to be higher?