Newbie incubator questions

[Monstertone]

Hi All,

I'm going to take the step, and make my first attempt at hatching some eggs soon. I'm currently putting together an incubator and have a few general questions.

First - do you all use Tek-Trol to disinfect your eggs, or is that not really necessary?

Second - on the incubator - I'm going to use an old CPU fan to circulate the air. It seems to me that if the air is moving too much, the heating element or light bulbs may have a hard time keeping the temperature high enough. How do you gauge this?

Does the air circulate from top to bottom, or does it make a difference? IE - if I put the fan on top of the incubator and draw the air from the bottom up and out does it matter, or vice versa?

That's all at the moment, but I'm sure I'll have more...

Thank you,

Tom

 

[ThePamperedPullet]

Hey Tom
Welcome to the world of incubating. We put our eggs in straight from the hen. They have a protective natural coating on them that helps keep out bacteria. As for the fan, I put ours to blow across the top of the bator that way the air would not be blowing directly on the eggs or newly hatched chicks. As for controlling the air flow, I hooked ours up to a model railroad transformer so that way I could control the speed of the fan. Works great. I also have our light bulb on a dimmer switch so I can get infinate control on temp by adjusting the lamp and the fan speed.
Eric

 

[cbiblis]

ditto on ThePamperedPullet reply. as for the fan placement, the most important thing it to try to keep a circular air flow around where the eggs are. I have a heater\\fan on a shelf at the top of my bators. the shelf is 2" shy of both front and back. With the force of the air it creates said circular flow.

_____________________________
l l l
l > Heater l fan > > l
l _________L_____________ l
l l
l l
l ^ v l
l l
l l
l EGGS l
l l
l l
l ^ v l
l l
l l
l < < < l
l l
l____________________________l

You would put a tray of water on the shelf in front of the fan to increase humidity.

 

[Monstertone]

Thanks for the responses, guys!

Since I'm buying my fertilized eggs from eBay, would you recommend the Tek_Trol, or is that still a bit overkill?

Tom

 

[Monstertone]

By the way, great drawing, cbiblis !!