Surprise fertil eggs as gift so made a quick incubator.

[arpolis]

Hello all, long time no post. My father went out of town and wanted me to check up on his horses, rabbits and chickens. He told me to look in the coop and any eggs there I can have. We have plenty of eggs at home now but recently dropped to only having 2 hens. So I figured I would take advantage of some fertil eggs. Last time we hatched eggs we collected the eggs from my dad over a 3 day period, they were kept room temp for another day or so and then added to an incubator of a friend of mine. Out of 20 eggs only 6 hatched and one was really tiny and weak out of the egg that died soon.

Now I have eggs collected over two days, the temps where colder in the mid 50*F to mid 40*F and where added to the incubator yesterday. I build reptile cages out of MDF White board so I took an already built box that did not have the sliding glass doors added yet, and made a see through double pane lid on it. Found a 5v 350ma wall wort to run a computer fan I had laying around. Finally got a hot water heater thermostat wired into a light socket cord with a 200W light bulb. All that and a bowl of water and bam! Incubator! I’ll just have to manually turn the eggs 3 times a day I believe. But hopefully I have better luck with this dozen of eggs.

Let me know if anything is drastically wrong. I’m expecting to keep humidity over 50%-65% and turning for 18 days. Temps seem to swing between 98*F-102*F. I’ll stop turning then and ramp up the humidity to 90% ish.

 

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View attachment 1586049 View attachment 1586050 Hello all, long time no post. My father went out of town and wanted me to check up on his horses, rabbits and chickens. He told me to look in the coop and any eggs there I can have. We have plenty of eggs at home now but recently dropped to only having 2 hens. So I figured I would take advantage of some fertil eggs. Last time we hatched eggs we collected the eggs from my dad over a 3 day period, they were kept room temp for another day or so and then added to an incubator of a friend of mine. Out of 20 eggs only 6 hatched and one was really tiny and weak out of the egg that died soon.

Now I have eggs collected over two days, the temps where colder in the mid 50*F to mid 40*F and where added to the incubator yesterday. I build reptile cages out of MDF White board so I took an already built box that did not have the sliding glass doors added yet, and made a see through double pane lid on it. Found a 5v 350ma wall wort to run a computer fan I had laying around. Finally got a hot water heater thermostat wired into a light socket cord with a 200W light bulb. All that and a bowl of water and bam! Incubator! I’ll just have to manually turn the eggs 3 times a day I believe. But hopefully I have better luck with this dozen of eggs.

Let me know if anything is drastically wrong. I’m expecting to keep humidity over 50%-65% and turning for 18 days. Temps seem to swing between 98*F-102*F. I’ll stop turning then and ramp up the humidity to 90% ish.

You need to mount your thermostat closer to the bulb. Like an inch or two from it. You can control your temp a little better. Put a shield between the light and eggs to block uv. Others will chime in with suggestions.

Good luck.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

How do you join MDF pieces together?

 

[arpolis]

I joined them with liquid nails and some counter sunk pre drilled decking screws. Then run a bead of food grade silicone along the seems to get it water tight.

I moved the thermostat where it is to adjust where the sensor trips off. If it is too close then it seems to trip early. The fan is pulling pretty hot air off that bulb but blowes off center from the eggs and in theory makes a circle of air flow and the air moving over the eggs is what I am measuring.

The fan and fan shroude shades the eggs from the bulb a bit. I have a hard time imaging a light block that would not mess up the flow of heat.

 

[red horse ranch]

When I hatched my 1st chicks with a homemade incubator I used a wooden box with a 40 watt light bulb. Most of the incubators I have now use 40 watts of power. So I think a 200 watt bulb may be a little much. The thermometer should be level with the top of the eggs and not too close to the bulb in my opinion.

 

[arpolis]

That’s what I thought with the thermometer and thermostat. So I tried to place those in close proximity to the eggs. We will see how this goes and I’m sure I will learn a lot.

 

[sourland]

Good luck for a successful hatch.

 

[red horse ranch]

Let us know how your hatch turns out. Good luck

 

[arpolis]

Thanks. I pulled 4 more eggs out from under hens this morning. They are sitting at room temp now because it is too cold outside. But I’ll get them into the incubator tonight.

 

[arpolis]

Hi

Day 5 candling. Looks like most all of them have veins. The brown eggs are hard to tell. Pretty exciting.