Styrofoam Incubators Club

[LaPoulet]

Congrats! That's been a bit if a struggle here this year too between 99-100 we will see how it goes good luck to you

Thanks !

Good luck to you all. My temp has been fine but I have a lot of detached air cells from being shipped.

 

[beetandsteet]

Little Giant waste of life. After 3 unsuccessful hatches in a row--all with 1/3rd making it all the way to the end, but failing to hatch.

Back at it with two new hydrometer/thermometers and already having wild and random temperature spikes to as high as 114F after sitting steady at 100.5F for 3 days empty. Now it's been at 95.9F which apparently translates to 100.6F for the last 12 hours.

Added 20 fresh eggs laid today from my personal flock. Hoping even one hatches at this point.

My suggestion would be to not put a single egg in your incubator until you can get the temperature steady for a week at least. Make sure you can open and close the incubator without wild temperature swings.
Have you tried hatching dry? Sometimes changing humidity levels can affect temperature, especially in incubators with cheap "thermostats" like the LG.
Also breeder flock diet is important. Sometimes a lot of late deaths can be a result of genetics.
Do your dead chicks ever get to an external pip? If they die before cracking out the shell, you could have the humidity too high.
Just some thoughts

 

[beetandsteet]

I had the same problem with the Little Giant I bought the first week in March. Called the company and they replaced it. The new one has not had a drastic spike but reads hotter than what the temperature really is by 5 degrees.

They are notorious for incorrect gauges!

 

[MeepBeep]

 
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I had the same problem with the Little Giant I bought the first week in March. Called the company and they replaced it. The new one has not had a drastic spike but reads hotter than what the temperature really is by 5 degrees.

They are notorious for incorrect gauges! 

The short of it is the installed gauges are essentially useless as gauges, cover it with tape or paint it, at least then it will not cause you grief or stress... Or paint it to look like this then it will bring you a smile...

 

[Duck Drover]

I have 3 forced air LG 9200 incubators for chicken eggs and 5 still air LG 9200 incubators for duck eggs. I bought some new for $40 and some used for half that. I use automatic turners in 7 incubators and the 8th one is my hatching incubator. The incubators are on wire racks to give them good air circulation and I use one vent plug during incubation and no plugs during hatching. I do all dry incubation since it is humid enough in the Seattle area that I don't need to add humidity and then I keep water in my hatching incubator and set it slightly cooler than my incubation incubators.

When I set up each incubator I used several of the junk thermometers that come with the incubators and sit on top of the eggs or empty turners if there are no eggs. I averaged the readings together and then I used an indoor/outdoor thermometer that had a probe to hang down through a vent hole right at mid egg level to compare newly set up incubators with proven incubators. One thing I like about the LG incubators is that there are no temp or humidity gages so I don't obsess over numbers once they are set up and my hatches are on schedule.

Back in the '80s (when the LG incubators used the wafer thermostats) I put eggs in, took out chicks, and got rid of clear eggs and quitters after too much time passed. I lived in a dry climate so I kept water in the trays but other than that I did not mess with anything since I did not even have a candler back then. If hatches were early I might lower the temp slightly and if they were late I might raise the temp slightly but I never made large adjustments one way or the other (using the lever before they came out with the turn stick). I had no idea what I was doing so the incubators did their thing and I did not worry about how they worked, they just did. I did not change anything and I hatched a bunch of chicks with hardly any effort on my part.

What has messed up hatches for me is thinking I need to change how I do something and messing up what works instead. I thought I needed to mess with the temp settings due to air temp fluctuations during incubation and increase the humidity to a higher level during hatching but raising the temp resulted in heat spikes that killed babies and raising the humidity just drowned my babies. I find cooler and drier is better than too warm or wet so now I stick to keeping at the low end of the recommended ranges. Once everything is set up to work, it is best to leave it alone. I candle to remove clear eggs and quitters while shuffling the developing eggs down through the stacked incubators until they go into the hatching incubator.

I will open the hatching incubator to remove babies and shells during hatches and I will assist if necessary. I candle before lockdown but I might also candle during lockdown to check progress if I have a concern. I have successful hatches but I still like to learn what works for others and share what works for me. I know there are alot of old timers who hatch without ever consulting the internet for advice and hens hatch eggs without anyone telling them how it should be done. Sometimes I think people overthink things, myself included, and we make things far more complicated than they need to be to work.

 

[Duck Drover]

What I want to add to my set-up is a thermometer that measures the core egg temperature instead of the air temperature and the plastic liner that makes the hatching mess easier to clean. Both are a bit more than I want to spend so for now I am doing without. My hatching incubator is the only one that gets messed up from hatching mess and I use shelf liner to catch most of it and antibacterial dish soap to get the rest of it.

I have left chicks in the hatching incubator in order to use it as an early brooder but they will peck the styrofoam and eat it if they stay in too long, even with food and water dishes so they can start eating and drinking. I would like to either paint the inside of the LG styrofoam shell with appliance paint (if it will be safe and not create fumes at hatching temperatures) or buy a plastic incubator with a nice viewing window to use as a hatcher instead.

The biggest issue with the styrofoam construction is that it is harder to clean and less durable than plastic. We have had to patch the hatching incubator a few times now and it is not pretty but it still functions well enough that I have not replaced it yet. At least I should be able to find a cheap used one if I need to replace it but I am looking at other replacement options that might cost more but last longer.

 

[beetandsteet]

DuckDrover, thank you for all the fabulous advice! Wow 8 LG's! You're probably a pro at them by now. And I would agree that too much over thinking can cause serious stress. Of course my special talent is over thinking so I am a mess during incubation

You think cooler and drier? I've had better success with warmer and drier. I actually like to have my hatch finished by day 21 with most hatching day 20.
I think you can kinda create a thermometer that reads internal egg temp. You can get a thermometer with a submersible probe (usually reptile thermometers have waterproof probes) and stick the probe into a small ziplock Baggie with water in it.....

 

[LaPoulet]

DuckDrover, thank you for all the fabulous advice! Wow 8 LG's! You're probably a pro at them by now. And I would agree that too much over thinking can cause serious stress. Of course my special talent is over thinking so I am a mess during incubation

You think cooler and drier? I've had better success with warmer and drier. I actually like to have my hatch finished by day 21 with most hatching day 20.
I think you can kinda create a thermometer that reads internal egg temp. You can get a thermometer with a submersible probe (usually reptile thermometers have waterproof probes) and stick the probe into a small ziplock Baggie with water in it.....

They sell the Egg o meter that measures internal egg temps also.

 

[Noodlez]

Quote:


Right now, my humidity is chilling at a steady 40%-43%. This is the first hatch with new thermometers and hydrometers; we'll see how it goes. So far, as good as I can expect really.

About 6 out of 40 of my eggs are always blank as I only have one actual rooster for 18 hens. Cream legbar, he's quite the stud, but I'm sure he doesn't make his way around to all 18 of them. I know the ones he frequents and the ones that he never breeds. He's a rebellious child because he never mates the EEs and Marans that I want him to! My barred rock roo is a little confused and follows my 5 ducks around--he's cute but he's useless. I have 5-7 more possible/likely cockerels coming up at various stages of feathering-out for the 49 more pullets I have currently in my brood room.

There are plenty of reasons why it's not happening for me. Just trying to weed them out one by one and temperature is just the one throwing me for a loop. I had to throw out one of the eggs exposed to the day 1 spike this morning because of damage I accidentally did to it moving one of the thermo/hydrometers--but I cracked it open to see and there was the tiniest little strand of red, so I'm hopeful some of them aren't cooked!

 

[Duck Drover]

DuckDrover, thank you for all the fabulous advice! Wow 8 LG's! You're probably a pro at them by now. And I would agree that too much over thinking can cause serious stress. Of course my special talent is over thinking so I am a mess during incubation

You think cooler and drier? I've had better success with warmer and drier. I actually like to have my hatch finished by day 21 with most hatching day 20.
I think you can kinda create a thermometer that reads internal egg temp. You can get a thermometer with a submersible probe (usually reptile thermometers have waterproof probes) and stick the probe into a small ziplock Baggie with water in it.....

I have been hatching successfully with them for so long that there has been no need to spend more money on something else. From what I have read, all the extra stuff does not measure accurately anyway so I won't be upgrading my LG incubators either. I would still be using my very first ones I bought used many years ago if the styrofoam had not worn out but they are cheap enough to replace that I deal with it. I have considered adding more fan kits to convert my still air to forced air but I am not sure the forced air is good for duck eggs. I have not tested duck eggs with forced air yet because the still air works and it is cheaper if I don't need to add fans.

We did build a huge cabinet incubator to hatch duck eggs because our flock has grown so large that the incubators fill up fast but we have not test hatched in it yet. I have not even run it to see how even the temps are or how stable it will hold heat because I have been using the proven incubators for now. I actually had someone try hatching our duck eggs in her expensive cabinet incubator and they did so poorly that I am not sure I should change what I am doing.

The reason I stick with cooler temps is that we do not have air conditioning so our house gets hot in the summer. If it stays too hot for too long the incubators get overheated. The incubators are better at heating up than cooling down. I have lost a few hatches during hot weather but never from them getting too cold.

I have not lost babies due to shrink wrapping, probably because it is naturally humid in our area. I also have a turtle tank and fish tank so they may keep our house humid enough for incubation. I have a programable humidifier that I bought to use in the cabinet incubator we built (actually converted from a free oak cabinet) but I could even use it in my hatchery if it got too dry for dry incubation to work. I am tempted to try dry hatching as well because once hatching starts the hatcher humidity increases significantly and large hatches get more humid than small hatches.

I have had poor results when I increased the humidity too much prior to hatching (my hygrometer from the lizard tank stopped working) and then it got far too wet during hatching so I am not sure increasing the humidity is doing much good if the outside air humidity is already high enough to prevent shrink wrapping. I had some wet hatches that were disasterous due to wet sticky chicks/ducklings so I won't be trying that again. In the past I just put water in the trays and did not do anything else to measure or monitor the humidity.

I am going to look into making my own devices to measure internal egg temperature because I have such a large cabinet to monitor in order to get it set up that I need to have multiple temps simultaneously. I like the egg ones because they can sit in the turners next to the eggs but they are expensive. Perhaps I can make something with plastic eggs that work as well.