Made an incubator!

[pinusresinosa]

This is our first time with any of this. We decided to make our own incubator, since what I saw at the store was nothing more than what we were able to make ourselves for a fraction of the cost anyway.

We've been running it for a while and getting out all of the kinks, in preparation for eggs coming in a couple of weeks.



It's been holding steady at 102 and this humidity for a while. We used a 40W incandescent bulb on a dimmer to control the heat, which we're getting really good at. The top can be raised and lowered for ventilation. The surface is some sort of material that you'd make exercise pants out of, found it at Walmart for 50 cents a yard so I bought a couple of yards for future use too. The bottom has water in it. The window is a piece of scrap acrylic that we glued in with silicone, and the light fixture is a bulb screwed into a simple plug-in socket that's on a dimmer extension cord.

We'll keep it running until we get our hatching eggs in a couple of weeks to get a feel of how it works over time. There's plenty of room in there for all of the hatching I'll ever be doing. So far so good!

 

[amirfarmer]

plzz can u post more pictures of inside....i make thinking to built my own incubator.....can u tell me that how u have controlled the humidity and temp...plzzz kindly help me

 

[pinusresinosa]

I would check out the DIY incubator thread here, which is where I got inspiration from. I also made something that I thought could provide the basic conditions ideal for hatching eggs and went from there. My camera's lens for taking closeup shots is broken, so I can't really get a good above close up shot of the inside now. But what you can see through the window is it really- a base made with a cloth stretched over a form cut out from an aluminum throw away roasting pan, with about an inch of water underneath and the thermometer where you see it. That's it, other than the light bulb fixture. The cooler is a really cheap $3.00 one from Walmart, found in the camping section. The top lid is on four toothpicks that we can use to adjust it's height, which we've played with a little.

I moved it to the innermost room of our house that also has the house's temperature control for the furnace because the temp varied too much overnight where it was before (in the kitchen). There are no vents or windows nearby it now, and no doors or anything too. Temp has now held steady at 100 degrees and 50-55% humidity since about 6am when I moved it. This is day two of testing- I have a couple of weeks to get it right before I get my eggs. I would prefer it be at 99 degrees on that side of the incubator I think though.

In total, this cost about $30.00 to make after it was all said and done, but I did spend more on lightbulbs than I needed to.

We'll see how it works!