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scflock said:
I wish people understood the difference. I've had people bring them back because the yolks "had blood in them". They've never seen a healthy, orange yolk. The're just accustomed to the watery yellow
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Sometimes there are blood spots, it's perfectly normal for a hen to have a capillary hemorrhage or a small piece of reproductive tissue pass once in awhile, but it turns people off who think it's an aborted chick. We had those before we had roos...try explaining it, forget it.
 
I have one more batch of turkey eggs cooking, and another batch collecting.

I have no idea how many birds I have right now, but I will take a guess:

turkeys 4 adults, about 90 juvenile, hoping for 25 or so more to hatch
layers 170 production reds, about 30 Easter Egger juveniles
broilers 20 in the freezer, 17 nearly grown out, 25 just hatched
8 bantams...quote of the day from DH "Are you sure all those chickens came from big eggs?"
wink.png


So there's a few birds around here. Now all I have to do is market them.

Circumstances have put me in the position where I can buy a good incubator. So my dilemma is do I buy a fully loaded Brinsea 40, an Ova-Easy 100, a fully loaded GQF or Dickey, or try the used market and upgrade something?

I thought about it today while weeding the garden and I need to be able to incubate 4 times as many eggs as I hatch, and all counts are based on turkey eggs. I want to have the capacity to hatch 25 turkey eggs a week minimum, and the Brinsea 40 would be the smallest that could do that. But with the 40, I'd still need to use my homebuilt bator to cook for the first three weeks.

The Ova Easy, GQF or Dickey would probably be smarter choices with my job. I want the redundant temp controls, auto humidity during hatch, and a glass (or acrylic) large viewing window.

If my current hens are typical turkey broodies, I will keep doing the incubation by myself. Those girls are flakes!
 
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welcome back glade you had a good trip . it would have been better if all of your birds had hatched . I'm glade you hatched what you did . now you know you need a bigger incubator than a 40 and you also know you don't need some used incubator .The Ova -Easy 100 or the GQF would be the way I would go. you need not to worry about your hatch. You have to much doing all the time. and you need to raise your production rate. so bite the bullet and get the big one. All I've done is work is work this week when I sat down to catch .up I had 250 unread post .but I've read them all. now I'm going to bed .
 
I've caught up, Hazzah! Yeah, I think Missouri is absolutely beautiful and am fine with the amount of mountains here. Far far here than I'm used to. I'm from Louisiana and moved to Missouri a couple years ago. Dug my first garden here this year, rock after rock after rock ugh! lol I'm quite happy with my home made incubator so far. I'm learning how to adjust it easily and so far so good on all the remaining eggs. :)
 
Well, I locked down 11 eggs this afternoon. Added some water, went out to dinner and came home to about 60% humidity. Added a little more and got it up to about 70. Went to the neighbor's house and came home to about 50%. All this time the temp had been holding steady. Woke up at 4 a.m. and the humidity is fine, but the temp had dropped to 90! Now I have been sitting for an hour trying to get the temp to hold. Decided I had better catch up on the thread while I wait. Now I have a heat lamp over the bator trying to hold the temp up. Had to crank the set temp up to 39C, which is about 102, just to keep the inside near 99. But I'm afraid to leave it there, because if it actually kicks in and works right (like it did before) then it will be too high. So far, I don't think I've cooked them too high, so they might still survive, but it looks like I'm going to have to babysit it all weekend to get there. And I'm worried that the heat lamp will cause hotter spots! Ugh...

Air cells looked good, activity looked good, a few look like they might come out sticky, weight loss was a bit excessive on 6 eggs. I'm hoping to see if the excessive weight loss caused any issues, but I think my temp issues are going to keep me from getting an answer on that.

Guess I better work on my cooler-bator today.
 
WVduckchick said:
Well, I locked down 11 eggs this afternoon. Added some water, went out to dinner and came home to about 60% humidity. Added a little more and got it up to about 70. Went to the neighbor's house and came home to about 50%. All this time the temp had been holding steady. Woke up at 4 a.m. and the humidity is fine, but the temp had dropped to 90! Now I have been sitting for an hour trying to get the temp to hold. Decided I had better catch up on the thread while I wait. Now I have a heat lamp over the bator trying to hold the temp up. Had to crank the set temp up to 39C, which is about 102, just to keep the inside near 99. But I'm afraid to leave it there, because if it actually kicks in and works right (like it did before) then it will be too high. So far, I don't think I've cooked them too high, so they might still survive, but it looks like I'm going to have to babysit it all weekend to get there. And I'm worried that the heat lamp will cause hotter spots! Ugh...

Air cells looked good, activity looked good, a few look like they might come out sticky, weight loss was a bit excessive on 6 eggs. I'm hoping to see if the excessive weight loss caused any issues, but I think my temp issues are going to keep me from getting an answer on that.

Guess I better work on my cooler-bator today.
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indeed sound like you are having it rough. Sorry hon. My little incubator fluctuates slightly but not enough I worry. They are all still moving well for me. About a week to go on most :)
 
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Now I'm thinking I need to replace the battery in my Spot Check thermometer. Got the temp seeming to hold steady, so I turned off the heat lamp, hoping it would hold on its own, but NO. I'm ok with the temp dropping a little, but I definitely don't want to cook them too high, so the heat lamp makes me nervous about that. I don't know what I'm going to do.


cppeace said:
indeed sound like you are having it rough. Sorry hon. My little incubator fluctuates slightly but enough I worry. They are all still moving well for me. About a week to go on most :)
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Thanks! I hope all goes well for you! I forgot what you are hatching?
 

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