Urgent: please help . . . . . skunk killed broody BO :(

[ChooksChick]

Hahahaha!! I have a chick and 2 eggs in my camisole right now. It's keeping them close to the right conditions....

ETA- broody got off eggs and I hatched 2, waiting on 2 that may not have made it. Would say it's good for short term, though I've heard of full term bra-cubator success.

 

[DulcyDoll]

I would go buy one. Home-made ones can take weeks to adjust the temp, much too long for already started eggs.

They can be incubated, deffinatly.

 

[milleryardchx]

You can make your own incubator my husband made me one last night out of a foam cooler and it was up and running in an hour and a half. lots of great ideas in this section at the top regarding homemade incubators and it cost about $27 dollars to make rather than $60 at my feed store and our has a fan and handles out for turning eggs.

 

[BirdMom]

Just get the cheap foam cooler from the store, if you don't already have one, they're less than $5. If you have a desk lamp, just cut a hole in the lid of the cooler just the size of the lampshade thingy. The lamp I'm using is a super cheap one from Walmart, I think it was $5. It's a clip on style lamp, and hte fixture inside is ceramic (safer) and the shade part is metal.

Line the hole with foil around the edges, it'll protect the foam from the lamp heat if there's too much for the foam (mine's been fine) and put a 25 watt bulb in the lamp. No higher watt, they're too hot.

Line the bottom of the cooler with aluminum foil, poke some holes for ventilation using a pencil or something similar, put a jar or cup in with hot water and a clean sponge upright in it to help with humidity, pop the eggs in and voila, cheapie quick incubator.

I made one three weeks ago. I just hatched out ten quail over the last few days, and I just have a pip in one of the chicken eggs in there. It stays very close to 101 degrees, and the humidity, while not always optimum, has been good enough for the birds to hatch just fine.

I made a window in the front of mine using plastic from a picture frame and caulk, but it's not necessary.

Oh, and you'll want a piece of shelf liner or something on top of the foil to help them be able to walk around after they hatch. The foil makes it really easy to clean up after the hatch as well as helping with the heat.

Here's a pic:

And here are some of our quail babies that hatched this weekend in this incubator. Sorry about the pic quality, it's just a cheapie cell phone.

I already have a pip in one of the chicken eggs in there, too, just pipped a few minutes ago!

Good luck, hope you are able to save some of those babies. They should be okay. We had a five hour power outage half an hour after our quail started hatching Thursday night. We still got eight more babies hatched over the next couple of days.

 

[NU CHICKS]

Quote:
Wait a minute in your bra! I thought I was crazy

LOL. Just joking. everyone at work think I'm nuts! Oh well.

 

[New adventure]

How do you trun the eggs? Do you have to open the top or just tip the whole thing from side to side? Never hatched eggs, but some day I might be in this boat too.

 

[NU CHICKS]

Someone please advise. How do you turn the eggs when using a homeade incubator?

 

[walkswithdog]

You turn by hand an odd number of times a day, usually 3. Reach in do it, close it. Simple.

 

[BirdMom]

To turn the eggs, I just open the top. I also only turn for teh first week or so, I read somewhere that after about five days the chick is moving around a lot and it doesn't need continual turning. It may not work quite as well as an automatic turner, but we're getting the chicks hatching just fine, not stuck in the shell or anything.

I figure if the hen gets off the eggs for half an hour a day or so to eat and do other functions, it's not gonna kill my eggs to have the lid off the incubator for a few minutes while I turn them or candle. I candled them twice, once at about a week, next at two weeks to weed out any infertile/quitters. Lots of growth, only a couple of quitters in three dozen various eggs.

May not be perfect, but I'm getting as good results as many with fancy pricey incubators.

On this lamp/cooler incubator, there is no temperature adjustment. I did take one day to determine that a 25 watt light was needed, not a 32, the "new" 40 watt equivalent at the store. Other than that, no temp adjustment. If the temp does get too high, I open up a few of the holes I've got covered with tape, or pull some of the foil back aroudn teh top of the light. I've only had to do that a couple of times since our house isn't a steady temp. It hasn't got under 99 degrees in the incubator at any point except when the power went out.

 

[Laura78]

I've got a homemade bator. It's styrofoam. We bought a light fixture (for a lamp) and put that on the side and use a 40 watt bulb, used a 9x9 metal pan with water and a thermostate that turns the light on and off depending on the need, we took some hardware cloth that was strong enough to hold the eggs and bent it and placed it above the light, cut 4 holes for venalation and to help regulate the humidity, bought a humidity/temp gage (digital) and put that in there near the eggs, use a glass pane from a picture frame to see inside and put that on the lid. Eggs are kept in an egg carton and I turn my eggs once in the morning and once at night (every 12 hrs). When I turned my eggs 3 times a day I didn't get any to live past 12 hrs after hatching, could of been the batch too. At the end of the incubation period I take part of an egg carton and soak it in warm water and place that over the bulb to get the humidity up, when I notice it drying out I get another piece ready and hurry up and which them out. If the humidity gets too high I just move the wet carton piece a little away from the bulb (about an inch or 2 away). I do a quick candling every week to keep any clear or dead eggs out so I don't risk a rotten egg spoiling the entire batch.

It did take me a few days to get the temp just right, but it was a cheap bator to make. I will always have a bator just in case.

I think in your case borrowing one would be the best. After wards you could start to build your own or buy one.