Our first ever incubation.

[Stewieb71]

After a long time reading, watching and more reading about incubating, my son and I designed and constructed an incubator. Yesterday we went off to a local farm and picked up a dozen Australorps eggs. Having run the incubator for the last four days I was happy that everything was running to plan, we set the eggs in the afternoon. 1 day down. Can't wait until the first candling.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Hi Glad you joined the flock. Be sure to ask lots of questions everyone very friendly and informative. Good luck with your eggs in your incubator. But be warned incubating can and will be very addictive.

 

[AmericanMom]

After a long time reading, watching and more reading about incubating, my son and I designed and constructed an incubator. Yesterday we went off to a local farm and picked up a dozen Australorps eggs. Having run the incubator for the last four days I was happy that everything was running to plan, we set the eggs in the afternoon. 1 day down. Can't wait until the first candling.

Welcome!!!!!... You will soon join the masses of Incubators anonymous...lol... Its so addicting, Like was already said, this is a great place for information, I have learned so much here, I love it

 

[Stewieb71]

I once read that the chances of having a power outage were directly related to having eggs incubating. Well, I think I'll agree now.
Day two I came home to find power to the incubator off. It turns out that the safety switch I put in place trips whenever the power is off. The kids informed me that the power had gone out for a few seconds a few hours earlier tripping the safety switch. Temperature had dropped 10 degrees Celsius. Turned the power back on and hoped that not too much damage had been done and came up with a backup plan.
Woke the next morning to find all of the neighbourhood power out. Turns out a car had taken out a power pole at 2am. Power wasn't restored until 11 am. Overnight temps out in the shed were around 5 Celsius (40F). I have no idea what temperature the incubator went to as I had to work.
That afternoon I invested in a deep cycle battery and set things up to cover a 24 hour outage. I figured that this was all a lesson in the unexpected. Lessons to do it right next time. I left things running so that if any had survived, we could keep the hatch going.
Tonight at day 5, I candled to find 9 of the twelve eggs with nice red blood vessels and an obvious spot where the embryo is.
Keeping our fingers crossed that not too much damage is done. So surprised to have nine developing. That's about as good as I was hoping for if everything went well on our first try.

 

[Stewieb71]

Day 9. Candled again. 10 definite developing eggs. I discarded the 2 failed eggs. Cracked them open to see if there was much going on. One had a small spot of blood but nothing resembling a embryo. The other had not much at all. 10 out of 12. So far I'm pretty happy given the power problems. Air sacs look about how they should.

 

[Stewieb71]

Some picks of my incubator.

It's a box made out of a sheet of foam. There's the back of an old computer to partition the heater and water from the hatching area. There's a computer fan and heat sink to circulate and dissipate heat. Temperature is controlled with an stc1000 thermostat that turns on a 50w globe. Concealed below the eggs is containers with 8 litres of water to stabilise the temperature. The viewing area is double insulated with two panes of picture frame glass. Total cost was under AUS $50

 

[McChickenNugget]

Nice incubator good luck on those peeps

 

[Stewieb71]

Thanks! Lockdown yesterday. Had one quitter. Egg autopsy suggested it died a few days ago. Down to nine eggs. Hoping for some action tomorrow.

 

[Stewieb71]

First peep!!! Fingers crossed.

 

[McChickenNugget]

Good luck!!