Thermometer help! Please

[Swissmiss989]

I have two thermometers in my incubator. One came with the incubator it is a little glass one with the red stuff inside of it. The other is a digital thermometer I bought because I thought it would be better. It is a essickair model 1990 digital humidity/tempature monitor. This morning I got up to turn eggs and my digital one was at 99.5 BUT my glass one was reading 102. This is huge! What do I trust and how do I find out which one is right? I'm currently on day 3 of incubating.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Do you have a medical thermometer?

http://cmfarm.us/ThermometerCalibration.html

 

[Swissmiss989]

No I don't have one but I will get one because this is horrible all this work and the readings are nuts. Atm ill watch the glass thermometer because its been more consistant then the digital.

 

[MetalSmitten]

does your glass thermometer have the paper backing? i've heard that the paper expands with the heat/humidity of the incubators, making their readings go a little off. finding two thermometers that you trust is way more difficult than it seems it should be.

 

[Swissmiss989]

Quote:
It had paper and it has plastic so you can set them on the eggs. Maybe the glass one is bad?

 

[Chinchilla2]

Most of those red glass ones have a message somewhere on the paper that says: Calibrate with a thermometer you trust before using.

If it is sitting on top of the eggs and the heat sensor in the digital one is below that level, they could both be right. I find using a digital one with recording capabilities and an aquarium thermometer to work best.

Do not fret the 102 reading right now. The red ones are extremely sensitive to temperature and you have no way of knowing when it hit that temp, how long it has been at that temp, or if it is just because it was closer to the element that it was last time. Keep on incubating and grab another thermo to check between the three.

 

[Swissmiss989]

Ok I will pick up another thermometer and test it. I will figure this out yet! I thought if a chicken could do it so could I. Boy am I a little deceived lol

 

[Cattitude]

Also pick up one or two of the glass enclosed aquarium thermometers; they are less than $2 each at WalMart. You can place them almost anywhere in the incubator, as recommended in this thread:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=14596-incubation-cheat-sheet