Where to place eggs in the incubator?

[rodriguezpoultry]

After mapping out the entirety of my still air incubator, I have found some cold spots (furthest from the turner and heating element) and some VERY hot spots. The coolest spot was 98.1*. The hottest was 104.7*.

There are several places where the temps vary. Some measured at 101* while others were at 99.1*. I'm probably going to put all the eggs on the outlying 99.1* and the 101* and try to stay the heck away from the 102* areas. I think I finally know what happened in that incubator...



I've tested the thermometer 3x now. I have a feeling it's more accurate than the thermostat in my place. When the AC kicks on, the thermometer is at 77*, whereas the thermostat says 76*. The AC is set at 76* so it doesn't make much sense for the AC to kick on AT the temperature it's set at...

Which means, my incubator was running 1-2* high for a proper incubation. Hopefully this batch will do better.

Am I wrong in assuming the "cooler" temps are the safe bet? I'm so scared after 3 incubations that nothing is going to hatch again.

 

[dusterbd]

We have a still air incubator as well and alot of the problems we had was with the temp staying right. We bought the fan kit and still had problems with it so we have found that putting it in a box and keeping the plugs open the temp stays between 99.5 and 100.4. This is just a suggestion you may try, it helped with ours alot.

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Well, there wasn't much of a choice...I put the eggs away from the hottest part of the machine, which wound up filling up the entirety of the colder parts. (Heat kills faster than cold.)