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The temp hasn't stabilized as of the time of this photo, but the eggs are in. This is a mix of about a dozen eggs that were laid over the past 3 days, and about a dozen that are somewhere between 3-10 days old. None of the eggs were ever refrigerated, but the 3-10 day old ones were left out in the aviary from the time they were laid until I collected them all at once. I tried to segregate them by which group they fell into, but my 4 year old and 2 year old sort of ruined that plan when they started randomly tossing them in the incubator. Ohh well!
One tip that I am sure has been said many times, but I will put it out again as a good factoid...there is not much use in trying to stabilize an empty incubator. There just isn't enough thermal mass to hold a steady temp. I have 5 thermometers in here. One red liquid/glass one you can see in the upper right, the remote probe fish tank one that you can see resting outside on the right top lid, a temp/humidity electronic one you can see in the lower left, another dual temp/humidity that you can't see, and then the built in one that has the red control buttons. When this was running dry and empty, each one read about a degree or two different with a range of about 98-101. I finally said screw it and put the eggs in there knowing that it would drop the temp a lot due to adding a bunch of 60-65 degree eggs. But guess what? When the temp climbed back up, most/all the thermometers leveled out right around each other. Now I am just trying to raise the humidity a bit. I am going to shoot for 40% until lockdown, then raise to about 70%. It is hard to follow all the black wires, but if you notice the black tube going into the hole on the right where you see a red plug on the left, that is some fish tank tubing that I have hooked to a syringe. I have the tubing going down thru one of the egg cups (you can see this on the right side of the control box) and down into one of the water wells. That way I can "inject" water without opening the incubator. I am not planning to candle the eggs at all, so this is mostly going to be a "set it" and wait incubation. I will adjust the temp and humidity as needed, and will put them on the wire during the last 3 days, but other than that I plan to leave it closed. We will see how that goes since I like to mess with things! Hahaha.
One tip that I am sure has been said many times, but I will put it out again as a good factoid...there is not much use in trying to stabilize an empty incubator. There just isn't enough thermal mass to hold a steady temp. I have 5 thermometers in here. One red liquid/glass one you can see in the upper right, the remote probe fish tank one that you can see resting outside on the right top lid, a temp/humidity electronic one you can see in the lower left, another dual temp/humidity that you can't see, and then the built in one that has the red control buttons. When this was running dry and empty, each one read about a degree or two different with a range of about 98-101. I finally said screw it and put the eggs in there knowing that it would drop the temp a lot due to adding a bunch of 60-65 degree eggs. But guess what? When the temp climbed back up, most/all the thermometers leveled out right around each other. Now I am just trying to raise the humidity a bit. I am going to shoot for 40% until lockdown, then raise to about 70%. It is hard to follow all the black wires, but if you notice the black tube going into the hole on the right where you see a red plug on the left, that is some fish tank tubing that I have hooked to a syringe. I have the tubing going down thru one of the egg cups (you can see this on the right side of the control box) and down into one of the water wells. That way I can "inject" water without opening the incubator. I am not planning to candle the eggs at all, so this is mostly going to be a "set it" and wait incubation. I will adjust the temp and humidity as needed, and will put them on the wire during the last 3 days, but other than that I plan to leave it closed. We will see how that goes since I like to mess with things! Hahaha.
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do you have a brooder/lamp/red heat lamp/small waterer to prevent drowning/way to grind up the food for the first two weeks/quail starter feed?
