Please, someone help me with my bator!!

[marymac]

I am new to using an incubator. I had to borrow my friends so I could hatch 7 BCM eggs. I have been reading as much as I can, trying to learn how to use the egg carton method, but I am more confused than ever. Do you put the eggs in from the start or the last 3 days? how do you turn them if they are standing in the cartons? Do you turn end for end, isn't that bad? I thought you have to roll them from one side to the other. I read you can tilt the bator. Do you do this instead of rolling or turning? I feel like I'm loosing my mind. If someone could point me in the right direction where I could read the whole thingy it might help. I just feel lost.

Thanks

 

[MandyH]

If you have no turner and are incubating in the egg cartons, you just put something( I use a piece of 2x4 I found in the shop) under one side of the carton to make it tilt. When its time to turn, take piece out and place under the opposite side. Don't tilt the bator if you have water in it. When its time to hatch, just remove block, and let carton lay flat. Voila.

 

[Garden Gal]

The eggs are either on their sides or in an auto turner for the first 18 days. If you are hand turning, put an x on one side and an O on the other - so you can tell you have turned them all over 3 times a day. If you have an auto turner, you simply put them in large end up and leave them alone unless it is time to candle them.

On Day 18, you either stop turning or take them out of the auto turner and EITHER lay them on their sides OR set the upright in the egg carton - with the bottom of each "holder" removed. My are hatching in an egg carton as we speak.

I hope this helps! Did you read the "sticky" on hatching at the top of this forum page? It might help as well.

 

[Junkmanme]

Although I haven't done it, this is what I have absorbed from reading posts here:

1. Cut the bottoms out of the egg carton sections. Put the eggs in the carton pointy-side down.

2. Use a 2x4 under one side of incubator to tilt it. Move the 2x4 to the other end of incubator to tilt the other direction. Do this 3 to 6 times per day for the first 18 days. After that, set the incubator level and don't tilt anymore.

This seems better to me than opening the incubator to roll eggs by hand. (Which causes loss of heat and humidity.)

This is how I have understood the idea.

-Junkmanme-

 

[Barnyard]

Quote:
I agree!! This is the way I do it also!!


ETA: I only turn my eggs 2 or 3 times a day.

 

[Barnyard]

 

[Junkmanme]

I have read that you can indeed tilt the incubator, with somewater in it, IF you use sponges in the water to hold the water. The sponges also help increase the humidity by providing more evaporative surface area.

-Junkmanme-

 

[Barnyard]

Got a point there!! Sorry!!

 

[marymac]

Ok,... So after 18 days I can either take them out of the egg cartons or leave them in, but not tilt them anymore, correct? Right now there is water in the channels in the bottom of the bator, so I would empty that and put a bowl of some kind with water and sponges?. Can I still do this, being I set them last night about 11:30? This would seem lots better than opening and turning them over 3 times a day.

 

[Junkmanme]

I THINK it would be suffiicient to merely place a couple of those small "kitchen sink sponges" into the water you have in the bottom of the incubator......and close it back up quickly. Temperature and humidity will, no doubt, fluctuate for a short time.....but it will stabilize and be OK.