I just got my very own incubator today! It's a Little Giant still-air. I'm going to be hatching some Wyandotte eggs in the next couple weeks, but I've just been offered Guinea eggs. :O Can you do staggered hatches in this kind of incubator if you have the turner? And can you incubate guinea eggs and chicken eggs together? I'd love to do both, but I'm afraid I'll have to turn down the guinea eggs.
I've currently have a mixed hatch running. BUT. if your gonna stagger the hatch dates like I do alot then use 2 incubators and you won't have to remove the egg turner and turn the remaining by hand because you can not have an egg turner in there to injure the chicks. and you can not turn the eggs after 18 days. Also it is too easy to confuse ones that may not have hatched with ones not due to hatch after they get knocked around a bit. I never take the egg turner out of my Hovabator. and I never put an egg turner in my little giant. I simply move the eggs from one to the other on day 18 and I can stagger them any way I want to.. I must be doing okay. my hatches this year have been 14 out of 16 / 19 out of 20 / 19 out of 20 and last week my first perfect hatch 20 for 20. so I'm extremely happy. otherwise. do yourself a favor with one incubator. run one hatch at a time. and get a fan kit. The little Giant does not seal up as well as the GQF and the inside temperatures tend to run cooler on the edges. a fan kit fixes this problem and vastly improves your hatch rate.
I am using two little giant incubators for staggered hatches, in the one with the turner the eggs are dated with a crayon for the set date, they then are easier to sort out at lock down time. If you are hatching different kinds of birds you could set the eggs that take the longest to hatch, then set the ones that take the least amount of time later so that you get a hatch out on the same dat. For instance I am hatching Turkey eggs, they take 28 day, then a week later I put in the chicken eggs, (21 days to hatch) so that they can all go to lock down on the same date and will start hatching at the same time. Have been using the extra little giant incubator for lock down and not removing the egg turner out of the other incubator so that there is no turning by hand. In the past I have ended up using a plastic container with some vents punched in it and a heat source with some tempature control for the lock down, (used an old desk lamp that has a bendable neck on it, so I could adjust the distance of heat from the eggs, and a mason jar for water for the humidity, this has worked pretty well. There is no way I cound remember what eggs were set on what date, I have to use a calander for each different hatch date to keep up with it all. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it figured out. This week the chick eggs and turkey eggs go into lock down, then 10 days later another group, then the 3rd group 10 days after that. I end up hatching a lot of chicks every year, sell the pullets in spring/summer/fall, they bring enough money to pay for the rest of the birds feed and upkeep, along with selling eating eggs and hatching eggs.
