Styrofoam Incubators Club

[old mcdanold]

a buddie just loaned me a hova 6102 and the instructions ar not in it any thing I need to know to get it started pls and ty

 

[old mcdanold]

oops meant 1602 darn typing lol

 

[LaPoulet]

oops meant 1602 darn typing lol

do a search on hovabator 1602n and it will pull up videos and or instructions.

 

[old mcdanold]

ty

 

[LaPoulet]

Use two or three thermometers also and a Hygrometer. Sometimes the unit is off a degree or two.

 

[Noodlez]

Well, I did a preliminary candle some of my eggs today since I had the lid off after a 3rd wild temperature spike. Nearly all seem to be developing in some way or another.

I was keeping notes in a log for later, but now my log contains obscene language.

At this point, I do feel like my incubator may be malfunctioning, as I know for a fact I had it set to 94.5F (it shows up as the set temp) before I went to sleep--6 hours later, I wake up to it being nearly 110 inside the incubator and 104.5F on the display, which is consistently off by 5F but these 10-degree variances seem to be my unit's M.O. Eggs feel body temperature, so hopefully they weren't hot long.

Guess I'll continue to play it out of the rough--but I'm definitely going to be contacting somebody at Little Giant about this incubator.

 

[CyndiD]

Hello, I just found this thread yesterday and subscribed to it.
I have 2 styro bators, one came w/egg tray and fan (LG) and the other is a still air bator (Farm Inovators). I figured out (for the LG bator) that if i put the temp probe directly under the heater/fan that i have not had a temp spike since. this has been a big help.

the temp probe is the "L" shaped probe on the left.
Hope this helps w/your temp spikes?

 

[throwntogether]

I realized I failed you guys and forgot to report the "success" of my first incubation. I ended up hatching 6 out of the 10 good eggs I went into lockdown with. Thank you for the advice and help. Just noticed a broody hen yesterday so on to the next training session in my epic chicken adventures.

 

[Lanaep10]

I'm new to this hatching game and I'm so confused about the humidity. Everyone here seems very knowledgable so I hope you don't mind if I ask some questions. Everything I read says not to do the "dry hatching" humidity thing. Should I keep the humidity lower than recommended until lockdown? I also will have to manually turn the eggs. Is this going to effect the temperature enough to ruin my hatch?

 

[MeepBeep]

I'm new to this hatching game and I'm so confused about the humidity. Everyone here seems very knowledgable so I hope you don't mind if I ask some questions. Everything I read says not to do the "dry hatching" humidity thing. Should I keep the humidity lower than recommended until lockdown? I also will have to manually turn the eggs. Is this going to effect the temperature enough to ruin my hatch?

What works for some doesn't work for all, there is no black and white right way to incubate...

Also as I say all the time a chicken sitting on the eggs has very little ability to control humidity, it it what it is... If it's 95° raining with 100% humidity that day, the bird on the nest isn't going to change that nor do they have a means to lower it... On the other hand if it's 95° and 20% humidity, it it what it is as well... Birds have some ability to raise humidity as they have been observed 'drooling' on the eggs on occasion, but this is not something they do normally...

That said IMO don't worry about this or that humidity level, your time is much better spent candling the eggs every 3-4 days and monitoring air-cell development and growth, or even better invest in a small jewelry scale and weigh the eggs every 3-4 days and monitor their weight loss... Monitoring air-cell growth and weight loss is FAR superior to any arbitrary humidity number...

That said, my DIY incubator on average runs about 40% humidity give or take... I fill the water pan every so often but not religiously sometimes it's bone dry for a day or two, other times is full...

I have a portable mister in the incubator and on hatch day I generally bump the humidity up a bit, to about 70% but again it's not religious I do it when I remember or if I see a chick struggling, plenty of times they hatch overnight or when I'm not around with no bump in humidity...

BTW digital jewelry scales are cheap on Ebay or Amazon... I really like the AWS-100 great for chicken eggs or smaller and highly accurate, but it maxes out at 100g so for larger eggs you will need a different model like the AWS-600...

http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-0-01g-Digital-Scale/dp/B0012LOQUQ
http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-Scales-AWS-600-BLK-Nutrition/dp/B000O37TDO