ya they are already the size of Annabelle's eggs, well her 2nd and 3rd egg. But I would have to start collecting them Wed in order to have 2 weeks of eggs to set...... so only after 6 days from her first egg. Guess if I get a bad hatch rate I can always try again.
so looks like I am buying an incubator and going to try to set some eggs. I am getting the one you recommended. How hard was it to calibrate and keep the humidity etc. I am so scared to do that! LOL Any advice you can give me on that incubator would be great!
Maybe since she didn't start laying until she was more mature she won't have a huge difference in egg size... thats how it has happened with Raisin. Her first egg was 63g and she regularly lays around 70g now. Not a big difference.
The incubator is SUPER EASY. It's easy to set up and just let it run for a day or two before you place the eggs. It comes preset for chicken eggs. It will be set on 21 days, and 99.5°F. When it's time to add eggs(and you've spent a day or two with it running) you can easily reset the "days-countdown" to 21 for the eggies.
When you first set it up you will add water only to the "A" section. It is nice because you add water externally without having to open the incubator. I used a cup to pour in, but a turkey baster or similar would work well, too. The "B" section for water will be covered with a red insert, and you won't use it until lockdown - if you even need it then. I found that filling the "A" section to 2/3 full gave me about 50% humidity inside the incubator.
The built-in humidity reader was spot on(for mine). The
temperature was off by about 1°F, and temperature is kind of a big deal. That's why it's good to have a couple extra thermometers in there to see how accurate it is from the factory. I believe the best reader of temp would be an older style mercury thermometer like you'll find for a fish aquarium or reptile terrarium. Might be good to set one of those inside during your testing days to see how it reads.
I got a two pack of thermometer/hydrometer combos(it was lkke $5 for the 2 pack) that I had set inside to see how they read in comparison to the built in ones. I got them on
Amazon... there are probably(definitely) better ones out there, but I didn't have any issue with the cheap ones. I kept them in the incubator until lockdown just to spot check temp in different spots. I found that the incubator is really quite good at temp and humidity consistency.
The auto-turner for the eggs is *awesome*. It turns them every hour, I believe. It just kind of rolls them a little each time in the same direction, counter-clockwise.
I'm trying to think of what else... OH! At lockdown, you take out the auto-turner tray... at that time, I cut and put down a piece of the foam shelf-liner that you'd use to stop items from moving around in drawers. The kind that has small holes so air still moves through. It helps newly hatched chicks from slipping on the plastic and having splay-leg problems.
Please keep us updated as you collect and place eggs! And let me know if you need any help during incubator set up or if you have any questions that I missed out on here. So excited for you!!!
