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

[kayakfish]

Here is a Hatcher my Hubby made me to work with my 1502 Digital Incubator GQF: I think he has done a wonderful job. It has a mini computer thermostat, 4 hatching trays, a water pan with 2 high speed 110 volt, 225 watt heater, with a completely un-connectable power plug. With a safety switch and fuse box.

 

[Lacy Blues]

That's a really nice hatcher! Congratulations on having a great husband!

 

[kayakfish]

Thank you he is a great husband.

 

[Lacy Blues]

I got my boards all cut, sanded, and stained today. Tomorrow, I will assemble the exterior door.

Just wait til you see my peep hole. It looks pretty cool and I'm certain it will line up right with my control center. I'm hoping I will be able to make adjustments to it if necessary as the door to the incuhatcher will be attached to the wood door of the cabinet. I also drilled ventilation holes in the wall and top of the cabinet. Just three and I'm hoping they will line up with the ventilation holes in the incuhatcher as well!

This is going to be an interesting experiment!

 

[KrystalRose]

So, I have an idea for a crazy emergency incubator. I am experimenting with it right now since I was inspired by my veggie starts for my garden. I took a small jiffy seed starting tray, it holds 12 of the small peat pucks and has a clear dome top like a mini greenhouse. I put about 1/2 inch of moist pine shavings in the bottom for humidity and heat barrier and a thermometer on top of that. I have this placed on a jumpstart plant heating mat with a towel in between. This mat is supposed to heat soil to a warm germination temperature. Without the pine shavings the temp was at 100, I wanted to see if the pine made any difference. I know its not an ideal incubator but if it can old the temp and humidity it would be good for dire emergencies right?

I have eggs under a broody right now, if they don't all hatch and she wants to get up with the babies then I figured I could move the rest of the eggs to this and see what happens, worst case I am not out anything.

Any thoughts?

 

[Lacy Blues]

What does your thermometer say with the shavings?

Also, if you were to use it as an emergency incubator and they were to be in very long at all, you might remove the lid from time to time so that gases don't build up in there. They need an air supply.

 

[KrystalRose]

The thermometer says about 99 with the shavings. Between the top and bottom there is a couple air holes, since plants need fresh air too. I would only have the egg in this until hatch, no longer. I don't think I would use this method as a regular incubator for the whole 21 days, just if a mother abandoned eggs or something and there was only a few days left. or to give any late hatchlings a chance to hatch. Kind of a fun experiment though, in case that's all someone has on hand.

 

[Jessshan8]

I'm sure you could wetten the shavings to get the humidity up as well.

 

[lazy gardener]

The biggest problem I see with this issue, especially wetting the shavings is the risk of infection to the chicks from dragging their umbilical cords through the moisture, especially if they have any umbilical hernia. I lost one to mushy chick disease, or peritonitis last year, because I went over board trying to get the humidity up after a shrink wrapped chick. there were wet paper towels in there, and the last one to hatch was rolling around in the wet paper toweling and debris from previously hatched chicks. They need humidity, but also a very clean hatching environment IMO. (Of course this doesn't match the broody hen environment!)

 

[Lacy Blues]

I'm wondering if anyone can help.

I got an incukit and have it all installed in my cooler. The only problem we're having is when we plug the adapter in, it shows that its receiving power. But when we plug the other end into the incukit module, the light on the adapter goes out and we don't get any power to the module.

Can anyone help?