Just realised after two hatches that my temps were low!

[Gypsy07]

I've got a fan assisted incubator. The thermometer hangs through a hole in the top and the bulb sits about two inches above the tops of the eggs. I checked the thermometer before my first incubation and it was spot on, so I went ahead with two hatches. Both of them ran overdue, which I KNOW can mean low temperatures, but I had checked and double checked the thermometer so I thought oh well, just one of those things. Two days ago I was getting ready to set my third batch of eggs, and I thought I'd sit the thermometer lower down in the bator, just to check. Like I said, it's a fan assisted bator, so the temps should be exactly the same throughout, but when I went back to check I found that down at the level where the eggs sit, my thermometer was reading just below 98!!!!!

So I have jacked the temp up so that down at egg level is 99.5, and hopefully now I'll get a Day 21 hatch.

But how on earth can a fan assisted bator not have even temps throughout? Gah!

I guess this is just a lesson to check everything, then check it all again.
...and then sit for an hour or two and try to think what I might have missed.

 

[justmeandtheflock]

I made the same mistake. The thermometer was too close to the heating element

Good luck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Or it might be in a dead zone where the air does not circulate.

 

[Gypsy07]

Well, it's something I never considered might not be accurate, cause it's a fancy shop-bought bator not a home made one (Christmas present from very practical boyfriend) and the thermometer is designed to sit exactly where I had it. I think I'm going to email the company and tell them the problem I've had with it. I just assumed if they put the thermometer there, that that's where it would get an accurate reading, but obviously not! Now I'm worried about what else might be going wrong in there...

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think an e-mail to them is justified. That should not happen. You might want to explain very clearly in the e-mail when you calibrated the thermometer. Their natural response will be to blame the thermometer, not the incubator. And I'm sure you will mention the consistent late hatches. Just trying to think from my experience what was relavent when I went through something like that.

I don't know which company you are e-mailing. I exchanged some e-mails with GQF about a problem I had with my 1588 and they got back to me pretty quickly and sounded like they actually read my e-mails. I was pleased with the way they responded. Hope you get a good explanation.

 

[Gypsy07]

Well, it really isn't anything to do with the calibration of the thermometer so they can't try that excuse. The thermometer is designed to sit in a certain position and it's not easy to position it anywhere else without making your own hooks and hanging them from the roof of the bator. And when you put it where it's designed to go, it measures the temperature there as being two whole degrees higher than it actually is right above the eggs. It's more a problem of the thermometer being designed to go in the wrong place, or too weak a fan meaning temps inside the incubator not being the same in every corner, which I thought they really SHOULD be.

The other thing I'm wondering about now is oxygen levels inside the bator. Like, if the fan isn't blowing the warm air all round the bator, is enough oxygen being circulated? Both of the hatches I did had chicks that developed fine up to lockdown but failed to pip at all. As I now know, temps were low, but I'm also wondering if maybe oxygen levels were low too? Both the air intake and the air outlet are quite high up on the bator, a couple of inches above where the eggs sit...

 

[Redcatcher]

I found that most forced air incubators have weak and inefficient fans so they are more of a hybrid, halfway between still air and forced air. Table top incubators are designed to run at room temperatures and many manuals give you an external temperature range (usually between 70*-80*) . Anything outside of that can cause the problems you described