Recipe for success, incubating eggs,any advice appreciated.

[Stoney Meadow Maple]

My wife teaches Pre K and has 12-13 3 year olds in her classroom, a couple years back she incubated chicken eggs, had reasonable success but I remember quite a bit of issues regulating temperature, maintaining humidity, etc, etc. and it seems to me there were some eggs that didn’t make it but should have. Provided she can find a suitable home for them (I am not looking to expand, nor get into duckling selling) what equipment would help out with successful incubation. Her incubator is styrofoam and is about as basic as it gets, just a rheostat for temperature control and she kept a digital weather station inside to monitor temperature and humidity which she adjusted by adding or subtracting moist paper towels. Combine that with her classroom being on the southwest corner of the school it seems like she spent most of her time babysitting the incubator and fighting to keep it in range, open to adjust, then had to wait for things to settle out, it was a lot like opening the refrigerator door to see if the light went off.
I guess I am wondering if there are any better incubators out there or some control system that would help be a little more hands off, egg turners? humidifiers? Duck eggs are pretty big, we don’t need a huge incubator, but a decent one would be nice. Don’t have thousands to spend on on either however it seems like the kind of thing we would want to have anyway so I don’t mind buying some stuff. Any other tips?

 

[cheezenkwackers]

If you want to spend the money, I believe the Brinsea incubators are the best. However, as a fellow teacher, I can’t afford one. I also use a styrofoam incubator with an automatic turner but I added an external thermostat. It stopped the temperature swings which result if the room temperature changes. This is the one I purchased: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01HXM5UAC/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I also mostly incubate dry, in other words, I do not usually add any water until lock down. Too high of humidity seems to result in ducklings who make it to the end but can’t hatch. There are several articles on this site about dry hatching and watching the size of the air sac or weighing the eggs to get the humidity right.
I hope this helps.

 

[Stoney Meadow Maple]

Thanks! Do the fan forced ones work as well as advertised? The dry incubation does seem easier, would the circulating ones dry them out too much?

 

[DucksAreBest]

I use the Harris Farms Nurture Right 360. It works great and very easy to use. It's cost is $150.

 

[Stoney Meadow Maple]

I had been looking at this one..so many choices.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/p...r-incubator-with-automatic-egg-turner-1029002

 

[DucksAreBest]

I like the incubators that have a good visibility so you can easily see the duckling hatch. The one I mentioned has a 360 degree view, and there are some others like that.

 

[DucksAreBest]

My wife teaches Pre K and has 12-13 3 year olds in her classroom, a couple years back she incubated chicken eggs, had reasonable success but I remember quite a bit of issues regulating temperature, maintaining humidity, etc, etc. and it seems to me there were some eggs that didn’t make it but should have. Provided she can find a suitable home for them (I am not looking to expand, nor get into duckling selling) what equipment would help out with successful incubation. Her incubator is styrofoam and is about as basic as it gets, just a rheostat for temperature control and she kept a digital weather station inside to monitor temperature and humidity which she adjusted by adding or subtracting moist paper towels. Combine that with her classroom being on the southwest corner of the school it seems like she spent most of her time babysitting the incubator and fighting to keep it in range, open to adjust, then had to wait for things to settle out, it was a lot like opening the refrigerator door to see if the light went off.
I guess I am wondering if there are any better incubators out there or some control system that would help be a little more hands off, egg turners? humidifiers? Duck eggs are pretty big, we don’t need a huge incubator, but a decent one would be nice. Don’t have thousands to spend on on either however it seems like the kind of thing we would want to have anyway so I don’t mind buying some stuff. Any other tips?

There are also some incubators that add water themselves, but they're expensive.

 

[cheezenkwackers]

I had been looking at this one..so many choices.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/p...r-incubator-with-automatic-egg-turner-1029002

I think I read that forced air do not work as well but I could be remembering wrong.

 

[Yardmom]

Having some sort of air movement, such as a fan, helps with keeping the whole incubator a more even temperature. I use a LG incubator with fan and egg Turner (less hands on work). I do not put in water until lock down. This works well if your air humidity is not to low.

 

[Miss Lydia]

@DuckyDonna is a good hand at hatching.