My home built incubator! PICS!

[marcuscarr]

Here are pictures of the egg tipper that I came up with.

1/8" plywood
3/4" pvc
pieces cut from a green milk crate thing

To turn them I was going to get clever and run a hacksaw blade along one side of the pvc sections so I could push or pull it from the outside of the box and turn them all at once. Then I realized that I can just poke a coat hanger through from the top and manually tip them without opening the lid. I will probably do the later.

Please excused the golf balls, I couldn't find any plastic eggs and the balls were handy.

I sure hope the real eggs are successful, because I have never gotten a friggen birdie from any of these golf balls.

Marcus

 

[marcuscarr]

That is an excellent point about heat from above. If i am not successful with this one, I will redesign.

I am hoping that by pointing the fan directly at the bulb I will be dispersing the heat enough that the chick will feel even heat from all directions. If the heat is the same from all around, i wonder if they would use gravity to orient themselves.

Marcus

 

[speckledhen]

Looks good! If you recall, I said we had to put a deflector in front of the bulb so it wasn't so intensely hot on that side and the fan blows across it and disperses heat much better than when the bulb was exposed. I just used thin metal flashing and bent it into the shape I wanted.

 

[marcuscarr]

Good point. I will put a reflector in tomorrow. I am also going to switch to a smaller 40watt bulb.

Thank you for all your advice.

Marcus

 

[Davaroo]

Yeah, Im afraid the embryos above the bulb are gonna cook. Before you set any eggs, I strongly urge you move it.

I like the turners, too. I just copped out and got an auto-turner off ebay!

 

[MissPrissy]

Very nice job!

 

[marcuscarr]

I decided not to use this design for the following reasons...

The eggs would be sitting so close to the bulb that some would likely cook, even with a deflector.

The styroform was too fragile as my kids would lean on the cooler to peer in.

The turner design didn't work out, because if you tipped it just a little past 45 degrees, the weight of the golf balls would flip it and dump the balls out of the tipper.


Other than those problems, this design would have probably worked and it was very cheap to build.

I posted another thread with my new revised cooler incubator.

Marcus