what incubator do I get?

[trunkman]

I'm new to chickens, I bought my first adult birds the first of the year, then purchased 15 more in March, now that I have a nice flock I would like to incubate eggs from my flock. The question is, is there an incubator that I can just put the eggs in and let it do the rest of the work, humidity, turning, heat ect. till the eggs hatch or do I have to do most of it myself? If there is an incubator that does it all where do I buy it?

 

[Denninmi]

If you are willing to spend more than the cheap foam types cost, you can find pretty automatic incubators.

I have a Brinsea Octagon 20 Advanced EX with humdity pump. You could put eggs in there and do absolutely nothing to them, even leave them and go out of town for most of the time, if you really wanted to, from day one until "lockdown" day, and then ignore them again basically until they hatch. Of course, they still need some attention -- primarily candling a couple of time to remove the bad ones so they don't go septic with bacteria, explode, and ruin the rest.

But with the Brinsea, the onboard computer chip takes care of the humidity and turns the pump on and off as needed, as well as controlling the temperature very precisely (it only changes by about +- 0.2 degrees each time it comes on). It has an autoturner base that turns the eggs.

I bought one back in late April and love it. It's a nice, high quality plastic, easy to clean, and has proven to be very reliable overall. The only complaint I have about the unit is that the engineers who designed it might give just a little more thought to the tubing that runs between the humidity pump unit and the incubator, since it sometimes get caught in the turner mechanism, although even then the water seems to get through it.

Other than candling, the only real maintenance chore with the Brinsea is to make sure the humidity pump's tank is kept full of water -- in my rather humid spring and summer weather here, I found that it needs refilling after about 14 days, although at that point it still is about 1/3 full. I think in a very dry climate like Arizona it would have to be filled more often than in a humid climate.

Cost with shipping was about $450. Their website is www.brinsea.com

Also, for total automation piece of mind, I'd suggest that you invest another roughly $75 to $100 in an uninterruptable power supply unit of some kind. I have an American Power Conversion (APC) brand one, and I am "guestimating" that it could probably run the Brinsea unit for at least 12 hours, if not quite a bit longer, in the event of a power failure.