Makeshift Incubator

[LoMac]

A few days ago I received 3 duck eggs and 1 chicken egg in the mail. I was expecting the duck eggs but was a little surprised by the "extra" chicken egg. Well I couldn't bear the thought of not giving the chick a chance to hatch. The problem was my little rcom mini incubator only holds three eggs. Initially I thought I could make them all fit, but when it came time to set them I decided to "set and forget" the duck eggs and figure out something else for the chicken egg. So I came up with this.... (its a take out container)



Its a "convection" style incubator? (I had never heard of this type of incubator but I read it somewhere online) It has vent holes in the bottom and the top to allow fresh air in. I am on day 3 and the temperature and humidity has remained very steady, and I've been turning it 5x a day. I know this is not ideal but I figured I would give it a shot. The odds are against this little egg- it has a detached air cell despite having let it settle after arriving. If anyone has any suggestions for how to give this guy a better chance any advice is appreciated!

 

[jruhle]

Well, with some spare parts and a bit of time(2 hrs) you could build a somewhat proper bator. I built one quite fast when a friend suddenly dropped off some eggs and hatched 8 out of 12!

 

[LoMac]

That's awesome! Thank you for your advice. I have built a styrofoam incubator before and the plan was to use this temporarily until I had time to make a proper one. However the temperature and humidity have been so stable (more so than the other styrofoam incubator I made) that I decided to just continue with this one.

 

[Dumb Kluck]

I have one late egg, yesterday it chirped & wiggled & scratched... mom was still interested until she figured out that she had 9 hungry chicks to teach foraging skills to. I brought the egg in and stuck it in a box with a light & a couple candy thermometers, it's right about 100 (90-101) and I just misted the paper in it to help with humidity. It gets the rest of today (day 23) to get with the program or get tossed, the other 9 hatched before noon yesterday. I can't babysit this thing too long. well, maybe just overnight