Just completely DEPRESSED!

[Intheswamp]

Wait a minute kare21162, when you swapped the tops the temperature kept dropping? Are you sure that you don't have a battery going bad in your thermometer or something? If the top on the chicken incubator is working ok then it should work just as well on the bottom of the duck incubator, right? That's got me confused, or either it's the strawberry parfait I had for dessert at lunch.

If all else fails, see if you can stick the duck eggs in with the chicken eggs.

Best wishes,
Ed

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:
Yelp, I've seen several places that actually dropping temperature during the last day or so of incubation.

Ed

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
Yelp, I've seen several places that actually dropping temperature during the last day or so of incubation.

Ed

I've seen that too, but wouldn't do it myself. I almost think that idea came when people weren't using a thermostat and the chick movement temp would raise the incubator temp. But with thermostats, additional heat inside will just result in the thermostat switching heat off more.

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:
Huh? [URL]http://serve.mysmiley.net/confused/confused0067.gif[/URL]

I think I missed something, somewhere...

Ed

What did you not understand?

About how a surge protector keeps the power from being pulled from the incubator. A UPS I understand, but a surge protector? In my feeble mind all a surge protector does is clamp down on spikes that come across the line by primarily using a capacitor to store the spike and release it slowly (at least slowly in electrical terms), they have no way of preventing brownouts.

As for an outlet being "drained", by that do you mean a "brown out" where there is a sustained voltage drop? I agree that that could happen but everything else on that circuit would be affected and being as there would have to be some heavy draw on a 15 or 20 amp circuit it seems that it would be somewhat noticeable elsewhere.

Whatever the case, no biggie.

Best wishes,
Ed

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:
Yelp, I've seen several places that actually dropping temperature during the last day or so of incubation.

Ed

I've seen that too, but wouldn't do it myself. I almost think that idea came when people weren't using a thermostat and the chick movement temp would raise the incubator temp. But with thermostats, additional heat inside will just result in the thermostat switching heat off more.

Hey, you're pretty good...I left out the word "suggest" or "recommend" and you still understood what I was saying!

I think the problem would be, too, that trying to change the temperature by a degree on our incubators for the last few days might be an adventure in itself...causing some very stressful times.

I do think that the writers were actually meaning that the temperature should be lowered, being as I've seen specific temperatures noted. I agree with what you're saying though that the hatching eggs and chicks add heat to the incubating environment thus causing the heating elements to turn on less frequently.

I think I'll just stick with the 99.5F for the duration.

Best wishes,
Ed

 

[raimnel]

I didn't even catch that you forgot a word.

 

[kare21162]

Wow! Thanks for the info! I'm not sure what happened. I just put batteries in the thermometer when I started the incubation. All I know is that it dropped to 89.8 for a few hours. I don't have it connected to any kind of surge protector at all. I have them in a storage room and there is only one outlet that isn't blocked

It's my first time doing duck eggs and I know that a bad flux in temp with my turkey eggs turned badly! I only had 1 hatch out of 12 and it only survived a day or so before it died. I'm glad to hear that they can take the flux at the end of incubation. Let's hope that it didn't cause any issues with them. Thanks everyone for your support! I was just overly upset when I couldn't figure it out and I didn't know what to do because it wasn't like I could go out and buy a new one at 1:30AM!

 

[kare21162]

Well it looks like all the ducks are still alive in the eggs, so that's a good sign. Let's just hope that my little mishap didn't cause any real stress or anything with them cause tonight at 6:45pm is lockdown!

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:

Best wishes,
Ed