incubator ideas! post your ideas for home made incubators, whether they work or not~

[Lacy Blues]

Here's a couple pictures.

The bungee cord is holding it shut as the door seems to be somewhat heavy and will swing open if not secured. Once it's in the cabinet, I have latches that will keep it shut.



I redid the screws on the vent. I found some aluminum angle material that was thin enough.
Looks better hu?

 

[Lacy Blues]

I also have a short video of my egg turner working. I've never uploaded a video before so I hope this works...

well, nevermind. It says it accept youtube or vimeo and I don't want to open a youtube account.... so!

Here's a picture of the turner instead.


When the turner motor rotates (5 times/hour) the steel bar slides through the guides and turns the egg trays! Pretty cool hu?

 

[mikiz]

Does anyone use reptile heat cord for their incubators?
I know it's used for reptile incubators, usually you line the whole container, either an esky, fridge(lots of people use glass door wine fridges or bar fridges) or styro box, with aluminium foil, zig zag the heat cord up and down and around the walls of the incubator, and then the rest as normal.

The eggs sit on mesh over water, or soaked vermiculite/perlite for humidity.

Not sure how/if that would work for poultry but I'm guessing it would be the same, you still use a thermostat, thermometer and hydrometer to make sure the temps are all right, and then you don't have the issue of lights flicking on and off all the time.

If you want to you could add a strip of LED lighting with an outside switch to see what's going on, or for the chicks when they hatch for their day/night hours.

 

[Lacy Blues]

I am so frustrated I can hardly stand it.!

I need to know about a thermostat that WORKS!!

Should I get a water heater one or will a disc thermostat do? I will need detailed instructions to help please.

My incukit is worthless, it never did attempt to reach 99.5 before the heaters quit pumping it out. I'm ready to pull out ALL of my hair. Somebody help, please?

I have to manually adjust my heat source and then it goes too high or too low. Finding the sweet spot is iffy at best.

If someone can help with wiring a thermostat in, I would really appreciate it. Some days, like today, I'm completely brain dead so patience in dealing with my ineptitude is required.

 

[Yiannisk]

Incukit is not design for cabinet incubators that is your problem you need as you said a good thermostat
something like this contact incubatorwarehose and ask if you can exchange incukit with it

 

[fried green eggs]

Adventures in Incubating got crazy this week for me. I have been doing staggered hatches for the last few months. I have two homemade bators for day 1-18 running and full. One is my Igloo bator in my kitchen and a shipping box bator is in my living room. I have a Janoel-48 I use for hatching in the corner of my living room. I have a brooder set up in the spare bathroom off my living room. The locations will make sense in a minute. The other day my Igloo cooler bator I made a couple years ago got cold because both light bulbs died sometime during the night.

When I realized it wasn't lighting up and checked the eggs in the morning they were cold to the touch. The incubator was down to 70 Degrees F.

I had eggs due to transfer that morning to the hatcher bator, but, I needed to clean it first. I pulled the cold eggs that were due to hatch and put them laying down in my other home-made incubator I had running and full but, I needed to get the eggs heated back up. I switched out the light bulbs in the Igloo and the eggs I still had in it slowly got back to 99.5 degs. When I finally transferred the eggs to the now running hatcher, I really wasn't sure any would hatch.

I couldn't believe it but, two chicks hatched last night and now I am hopeful and still have two to go. Yes I didn't kill them!

But the Real Surprise came this morning! I heard chirping but it didn't sound like it was coming from the hatcher and it didn't really sound like it was coming from the bathroom where the brooder is. Where was the chirping coming from?

I checked the Igloo and the eggs were fine and I went about paperwork. A little later I heard chirping again but, this time it was a distress chirping and I was sure it was coming from the Igloo so, I looked and sure enough there was a new little chick hanging upside down next to the egg turner.

How did I miss moving that egg??? The chick was fine when I pulled it out of its predicament and moved it to the hatcher with the other new chicks.

I don 't get it! I have been keeping the humidity in the Igloo between 18% - 32% not what you want for lock down! So how did this turn out Ok?

This little chick piped and hatched with way to low of humidity and while on a running auto-turner and that's after the egg had been chilled down to 70 degrees just a couple days before.

I think I will name the little chick "Angel" because it must have a good one!

 

[Gentry1350]

Is there a "formula" for the amount of energy output needed per volume of space? I bought an inoperable mini, mini-fridge with about 2 cubic ft of space. My intention was to turn the bottom into an incubator and the top into a hatcher. (The top is 1 cu ft). Anyway, I was planning on dismantling my Hovabator and using those parts in my new build. I know the heat source from the Hovabator would be sufficient to heat the "hatcher" portion, but I was hoping I could use it to heat the bottom as I have another project in mind for the hatcher. I also purchased an STC1000 to use as my main thermostat.

Here is a pic:

 

[Lacy Blues]

I was looking at an STC1000 thermostat the other day and the part about it heating AND cooling kind of threw me off. I'm not an electrician and was a bit confused. Thought I would need to hook it to something to cool for it to work properly.

I have a message in to incubator warehouse for switching my incukit for a thermostat. We'll see what they say.

 

[coachYania]

I was looking at an STC1000 thermostat the other day and the part about it heating AND cooling kind of threw me off.  I'm not an electrician and was a bit confused.  Thought I would need to hook it to something to cool for it to work properly. 

I have a message in to incubator warehouse for switching my incukit for a thermostat.  We'll see what they say.

I order a SSTC 10000, builded my own incubator, no hard at all, I am a girl, and know anything about electricity and cable, if I could do it, anybody can do it, lol

 

[coachYania]

This is what I did