Incuview Incubator

[Ms Biddy]

Divider worked well, except I still have air circulation concerns.
Was hard to get humidity up, had to add sponges.

Chicks stayed where they hatched, divider walls are softish and movable, but the shape of the lid in conjunction with the top of wall being very close to lid kept them from being pushed too far.

Will make pattern soon, things are crazy here with spring chores.

What do you think can or should be done to address your air circulation concerns? I'm getting ready to set up my incubator and was planning to order some 7 mesh.

 

[aart]

What do you think can or should be done to address your air circulation concerns? I'm getting ready to set up my incubator and was planning to order some 7 mesh.

Not sure...just be vigilant when dividers are in?

I'm not sure why I had trouble keeping humidity up on the hatch using the dividers as opposed to the hatch not using the dividers. It could have been the dividers or it could have been the copious amount of fuzz landing on the water surface in reservoirs and maybe inhibiting evaporation, fuzz issue was not present in hatch without dividers. 1 run doesn't give me much data to know what, if any, problems there are with the dividers.

Having worked in the engineering world for so long, my mind spins with how to design an accurate test to evaluate airflow with and without the dividers in place. But what I think and what I actually do can be far between.....
....like still not having made the divider pattern I promised

ETA: Got the pattern whipped out.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/incuview-divider-pattern-by-aart.73966/

 

[Kiki]

Oops, sorry Aart!

Name is close to Art, which I know of as short for Arthur. I should know better.

Nowhere near that much fan fuzz on any of my many hatches.

I use the hose attachment on my vacuum to clean off the fuzz. Wipe the lid with soapy water. Clean the bottom with bleach water, rinse well, dry out in sun.

I did this once too.

 

[JiminyChristmas]

I read 10 or more pages of this but haven't the time to read 144, so forgive me if this has been adressed.

We have had this incubator for a year or so and had many successful hatched but I CANNOT for the life of me get the humidity to stay any where near stable. Top it off at night and by morning it' down to the 20s. Top it off in the morning and when I get home from work it' in the 20s. Really frustrating.
It' located in an interior closet and temp stays steady.
Anybody have any tips or experience to help steady it out? I hatch chickens and quail both, and the low swings really worry me with the quail. My first batch of Bobwhites were nearly all splay-legged.
I dont see the $175 value in this thing and certainly can't justify spending another $100 or so on a piggyback reservoir.

 

[Molpet]

I read 10 or more pages of this but haven't the time to read 144, so forgive me if this has been adressed.

We have had this incubator for a year or so and had many successful hatched but I CANNOT for the life of me get the humidity to stay any where near stable. Top it off at night and by morning it' down to the 20s. Top it off in the morning and when I get home from work it' in the 20s. Really frustrating.
It' located in an interior closet and temp stays steady.
Anybody have any tips or experience to help steady it out? I hatch chickens and quail both, and the low swings really worry me with the quail. My first batch of Bobwhites were nearly all splay-legged.
I dont see the $175 value in this thing and certainly can't justify spending another $100 or so on a piggyback reservoir.

are you using the inside ring only before lockdown? Filled inside ring lasts over a day in mine.
what is the humidity in the room it's in?
.. some people with other incubators do several things to raise room humidity... have a humidifier in that room or put wet sponge next to, not blocking, the vent.

some people put wet sponges inside at lock down to raise the humidity.

 

[Kiki]

I read 10 or more pages of this but haven't the time to read 144, so forgive me if this has been adressed.

We have had this incubator for a year or so and had many successful hatched but I CANNOT for the life of me get the humidity to stay any where near stable. Top it off at night and by morning it' down to the 20s. Top it off in the morning and when I get home from work it' in the 20s. Really frustrating.
It' located in an interior closet and temp stays steady.
Anybody have any tips or experience to help steady it out? I hatch chickens and quail both, and the low swings really worry me with the quail. My first batch of Bobwhites were nearly all splay-legged.
I dont see the $175 value in this thing and certainly can't justify spending another $100 or so on a piggyback reservoir.

Are you sure your humidity gauge is reading correctly?
Has it been calibrated?

 

[JiminyChristmas]

Calibrated, no. I have a second electronic gauge inside and it reads consistent w the stock unit.
Molpet, thank you for the suggestions. We have been filling the outside reservoir only before lockdown, I should be using the inside only?
I don't want to humidify the room its in if I can help it or else I'll have to find another place for it(my guns are stored in the same closet). There really is no better place in my small house to put it.

 

[Molpet]

Calibrated, no. I have a second electronic gauge inside and it reads consistent w the stock unit.
Molpet, thank you for the suggestions. We have been filling the outside reservoir only before lockdown, I should be using the inside only?
I don't want to humidify the room its in if I can help it or else I'll have to find another place for it(my guns are stored in the same closet). There really is no better place in my small house to put it.

mine came with a paper that was separated from the main manual.. That paper said to use the inside ring first and then use the outer for lockdown... I missed that at first and it was better when someone on here mentioned it. Earlier I put a wet sponge by the vent to pre moisten the air, which helped.

 

[Finnie]

There was one time when the air in our house was dry, and I couldn't get the incuview humidity to stay up. I did run a small humidifier in that room, and that solved the problem. My theory is that if the air in the room is excessively dry, then it's going to suck moisture out of your incubator until it reaches an optimal level. Running an incubator in a dry room is basically using it as a room humidifier. You're not going to win the moisture battle until the room reaches an equilibrium.

Normally our household humidity isn't dry, and I don't have problems keeping the incuview RH in the 60s. (For lockdown). I will say though, that I've never concerned myself with the reservoirs. I use a sponge and squirt water generously onto the sponge, saturating it and allowing the excess to run down into whichever reservoir channels it happens to go in. It certainly isn't enough water to fill any of the reservoirs. I am a big fan of using a sponge.

 

[Finnie]

A while back I posted about some mesh bags I had ordered to use for pedigree bags. I was going to come back and say what I thought of them. I've only used one bag, one time. It did the job. And came out through the wash fine too. The one negative I found was that it really restricted my view of the pip hole.

This week's hatch will be a better test though. I am using 3 of the bags to keep track of turkeys from four different mothers. I also have a few different chickens to keep track of, so I have two bags holding both chicken eggs and turkey eggs.

I do think I like how flexible bags are as opposed to plastic baskets. It made it easy to place the eggs that remain outside the bags. Now we'll see how the chicks do in a more crowded situation. 14 turkey and 7 chicken eggs. (But I marked 1 turkey as DEAD, because it seemed like it might be.)

Last week I didn't need to use the bags because I only had turkey eggs from one mother. 4 out of 6 hatched.