Our incubator test run

Well we picked up a used Lyon RX2 incubator with the humidity attachment (whatever the offical name is) from a lady who had used it to hatch swans prior to her moving into our neck of the woods. Seems like a heck of a piece of equipment, although we did pay a bit much for it.

We fired it up, and played around with it until we "mastered the controls" since no manual was available when we picked it up.

Well, we couldn't wait, and didn't want to risk a lot on the test drive so DW walked over to the neighbors who sell eggs for consumption. She came home with a dozen for $2.50, mixed green, blue and pinkish so we figured EE's. She "just had to" go back for a second dozen the next day, so we sat 12 each day, for 2 days.

With all of the help of this forum, we managed to candle after 5 days and could see activity starting in several eggs, and were unsure about several others. We kept watch, no real effort required except filling the water bottle every day. We did manage to get our humidity dialed in at about 40% after a few days, we started at 60% and held it there for the first few days, there seems to be a lot of conflicting information on the internet

We candled at day 17 / 18, and found that 8 never developed and removed them, adjusted the humidity up to 65% and removed the rollers and placed the eggs on some shelf liner.

Day 20, later in the evening the action started, pipping of about 6 eggs, and we started seeing hatching overnight. DD stayed up until the first chick made it's grand arrival and woke us to look, very exciting. That evening more pipping and we just finished with 13 of the remaining 16 fertile eggs hatching, no bad for beginners we thought.



All in all a interesting experience that seems to have an addictive feature as a bonus. We have 3 dozen eggs scheduled to arrive shortly...........this has the makings of taking on a life of it's own. How many chickens is too many? Lol!