When to Lockdown.

xcalibor67

Chirping
Apr 28, 2017
200
94
86
When i went to pick up my eggs to hatch, i spent over an hour with the gentlemen, talking about hatching and techniques. He Used a homemade bator similar to mine in size. I noticed he had what looked to be a metal type fan about 8/10" diam. and his heating coil looked to be a single 5kw element from the auxiliary heat strips off a residential furnace. Didnt ask(wished i had) if he was running it on 220v, or 110. I tried one from an old 220v dryer unit, running on 110v, and it got way to hot for my lil 120mm fan.. Apparently it works, but i would have thought that to much heat/air to fast would be a bad thing? Also he told me to forget about "Locking" down on day 18, that waited until the 1st bird pipped, and then locked them down..In no way am i condemning his methods(In case he is on BYC, lol) I just had some free time today, and figured i would get some opinions.
 
Well, LOL I wonder what this "teacher's" hatch rate is??? You can not use a 5k watt heat strip--its to hot to quick Unless he is using a room size incubator---then it might work. My heat strip looks similar to a 5k heat strip but its only a 250 watt strip. Did this teacher talk to you about Humidity. Humidity is very important if you want good hatches. Chicken eggs need to/should be locked down on day 18 with the humidity raised, if you had it correct the first 18 days.
 
The only reason I would recommend not locking down day 18 is if the air cells were too small come day 18 because humidity has been too high over the first 17 days not allowing for proper moisture loss. Then it would be understandable to push back lockdown while running dry and trying to increase air cell size, and raising at first sign of pip.
When everything is right at day 18 and lockdown commences, everything is taken care of and you don't have to worry about keeping an eye out for pipping and having to pull eggs out at point of hatch to add water and remove turners, etc...
That's my opinion.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom