Which Incubator to buy?

[TattooedMama]

The humidity issues were awful. Yes, I only had the three and I'm hoping that was part of the problem. I could get the humidity up to 60-65% but I COULD NOT get it to stay there! It would dry up in a matter of a few hours. I tried everything. I had extra cups with water, sponges, paper towels, misted the inside... Two of the eggs failed to pip internally. They were pretty much shrink wrapped. One bantam cochin hatched with assist, but it isn't doing well and I really don't expect it to live. I did have the vent open (when the stupid thing would stay open). My schedule was just too busy to allow me to sit beside the incubator for 3 days to add water. I'm pretty annoyed with the whole situation. I'm going to fill it up with eggs from my batch due on the 9th to see if it does any better full. Hopefully so because I'm pretty disappointed right now!

I'm so sorry!!! And now I'm even more nervous as my babies are set to begin hatching tomorrow night. I am stuck at 60-62% at best and as you said, it doesn't last long. I am really wishing I had gotten a different incubator at this point. The unit has its upsides but if you can't keep any humidity in the bator than its useless. I will be interested to see how it performs with a full batch of eggs. If even then it doesn't hold humidity than its just a piece of junk and I will try and sell mine.

I wanted to try hatching Turkey eggs next and I think they take relatively higher humidity throughout the incubation period so we will see how that goes. I hope my babies hatch tomorrow or I will be super bummed

 

[claudiab]

Is the Brinsea bator what you are having humidity level issues with? I always leave my vent at the halfway spot, never all the way open. Also, where do you have the incubator placed at? Are you getting drafts,etc.? That would make a great deal of difference in it's ability to hold the humidity level, I think.

 

[TattooedMama]

Is the Brinsea bator what you are having humidity level issues with? I always leave my vent at the halfway spot, never all the way open. Also, where do you have the incubator placed at? Are you getting drafts,etc.? That would make a great deal of difference in it's ability to hold the humidity level, I think.

I have it in my bedroom which is at the back of the house and holds the most even cool temperature during the day. It can get pretty hot and cold in the other rooms with the outside heat being around 90 daily and the air blowing all day (only at 78 but still can get pretty cool at times). The bator is on a 4 1/2-5 foot tall cabinet just out of reach of prying 3 year old fingers and eyes in the corner of my bedroom. There really is nowhere else to put it so this is what I settled with.I have started to close the vent, just barely and I did get the humidity to 64% and it has stayed there steadily for a few hours so far. The vent is still at least 3/4 of the way open so it was a minor adjustment but it made a BIG difference!!

 

[claudiab]

Try closing the vent half way and see if that helps ya a bunch. I haven't had any issue with mine at all, so I am hoping this will help you!

 

[brandy00]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am also using the Brinsea. I'm a nurse so getting the IV setup stuff would be no problem lol! My frustration stems more from the fact that I bought this pricey incubator so I didn't have to mess with it so much. I could buy the humidity pump but honestly if I'm going to do that I would rather just have the Rcom Pro so I only have one cord and don't have to mess with this auto turn cradle (that doesn't impress me much)! At this point I'm leaning towed selling the Brinsea and ordering an RCom before next spring.
Just wanted to add...I'm only airing my frustrations so that other people who are trying to decide on which incubator to buy can read this thread and get honest feedback. I do plan on trying again with a full incubator and letting everyone know how that goes

 

[Sydney Acres]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am also using the Brinsea. I'm a nurse so getting the IV setup stuff would be no problem lol! My frustration stems more from the fact that I bought this pricey incubator so I didn't have to mess with it so much. I could buy the humidity pump but honestly if I'm going to do that I would rather just have the Rcom Pro so I only have one cord and don't have to mess with this auto turn cradle (that doesn't impress me much)! At this point I'm leaning towed selling the Brinsea and ordering an RCom before next spring.
Just wanted to add...I'm only airing my frustrations so that other people who are trying to decide on which incubator to buy can read this thread and get honest feedback. I do plan on trying again with a full incubator and letting everyone know how that goes

Those were also my deciding points on the R-com vs the Brinsea: the humidity issue and the cradle. I liked the Brinsea reputation and the product support within the U.S, which was very difficult for me to leave behind when I decided on the R-com. But the cradle was a negative. If I wasn't going to get humidity control, then there was no advantage of the Brinsea over the Incuview, and the Incuview had the rheostat-like thermostat, which was an advantage. If I was going to get humidity control, then the Brinsea with the humidity pump was actually more expensive than the R-com Max, so why deal with the cradle and the extra tubing? I just hope, hope, hope that I don't end up with a lemon machine with no way to take advantage of the warranty locally. The R-com Pro is a wonderful machine, but I couldn't justify the extra cost just to have the machine go into automatic lockdown on day 18, when I can easily change the settings myself on that day (hopefully I won't kick myself sometime in the future if I forget to look at a calendar!). The increase in cost for the Pro-20 over the Max-20 of the four places I seriously considered were $154, $220, $225, and $256, which seemed a lot just for that one extra feature.

I should be getting my R-com Max-20 in 1-3 days if there are no shipping delays. I have eggs saved from my hens to put inside. I'll let everyone know how things progress. Hopefully another hen will go broody in the next 1-2 weeks so I can put the chicks under her when (if) the eggs hatch.

 

[TattooedMama]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am also using the Brinsea. I'm a nurse so getting the IV setup stuff would be no problem lol! My frustration stems more from the fact that I bought this pricey incubator so I didn't have to mess with it so much. I could buy the humidity pump but honestly if I'm going to do that I would rather just have the Rcom Pro so I only have one cord and don't have to mess with this auto turn cradle (that doesn't impress me much)! At this point I'm leaning towed selling the Brinsea and ordering an RCom before next spring.
Just wanted to add...I'm only airing my frustrations so that other people who are trying to decide on which incubator to buy can read this thread and get honest feedback. I do plan on trying again with a full incubator and letting everyone know how that goes

I agree 110%. The reason I opted to pay more was for the additional security of a machine that was to work above average. I don't want to have to obsess over it or be afraid to leave too long. The choice to purchase a Brinsea was to give myself piece of mind that my expensive eggs were in good hands, the extra money I paid was for that added security. This won't be my last time using it and I really hope it works well for me for hatching and for my next batch. However, I'm beginning to wonder if it was worth it. Hopefully our honest reviews will help other people in the future who may also be looking at the Brinsea Octagon 20 Advance. At least with different points of view people can weigh opinions and make a decision for themselves. I feel like the Incuview would have possibly been a better choice. I could have spent less, got the same capacity and similar features with more floor space for not only hatching but also if the need arose to add extra containers of water to increase humidity, that I actually could fit them in the bator to do so!!

I want to know how your next hatch goes and I will let you guys know how my babies do. Day 21 starts Tuesday at 6:45PM pacific time.

 

[TattooedMama]

That's awful -- humidity issues are the most difficult.

You may already be doing this, but this may help if you've not tried it yet. Get some aquarium air hose tubing (or an old IV line, or any kind of tubing really) that you can fit onto the end of a large syringe (the 60 cc size work great, and you should be able to get them from most feed stores or veterinary offices). Thread the tubing through the vent hole (or if using a styrofoam incubator, create a new hole just for the tubing). Tie the end of the tubing to a sponge, and you can re-saturate the sponge easily from the outside, without having to open the incubator. If everything's in place, it should take about 10 seconds to do. If you get a gang-valve for the aquarium air tubing from the pet store, you might be able to branch out the tubing inside the aquarium and saturate multiple sponges at once. You'll just need to do a few test runs to know how to adjust each branch, and approximately how much water to use each time. Evaporation from the sponge, which is what creates the humidity, is determined by the surface area of the sponge, not the volume of the sponge, so multiple small sponges are much better than one large sponge. Also, different sponge qualities can be a factor. Some sponges don't fill with water as well as others, or don't distribute water throughout the sponge as well, or are so fibrous inside that they trap water in the center and not the surface, etc. There's lots of variables with sponges, so try different ones.

Also, there's a lot of other things that could help without taking up much space. How about flannel? When flannel gets wet it can really hold a lot of water, but has a huge surface area that would provide evaporation. It also absorbs water and distributes it very well. So if you fill the humidity wells on the bottom of the incubator and put a corner of flannel in the water, it will wick the water up into the fabric and increase your evaporative surface.

Or here's something really out of the box. Go to your local veterinarian and ask them to save you an empty IV bag and a used IV line, which they would likely do at no charge, or simply buy the supplies unused, which should be under $30. Empty out the IV fluids from the bag (if not already empty) and rinse well with water (if the line is used, run water through it also). (If you don't know how to disassemble all the parts and get water into the bag, ask them to show you. Different types of IV bags will be different, and some may require you to inject water in through an injection port, which isn't difficult but requires a large syringe and needle, so be sure you have what you need to fill it with water before you leave the office.) Set up your humidity wells, and/or set up your sponges, or whatever it takes to keep the humidity up, then hang the IV bag above the incubator (because it's a gravity drip) hook the IV bag (full of water, and with IV tubing attached) into the system, adjust the drip rate (there's a valve on the IV tubing that allows you to adjust how fast the fluids go through the tube) to whatever it takes to keep the wells filled, the sponges wet, whatever system you've got set up. You can have that liter of water (about 1 quart) go in over 12 hours or 72 hours or anything in between, depending on how much water is needed to keep everything wet. And it all happens without you standing over it!!! It'll probably take a few runs to figure out how fast you need the water to drip in, and it may change with the number of eggs you have in the incubator, or the number of sponges or whatever you have to create evaporative surface area, but it's a really cheap way (potentially free if you get used stuff) to create a humidity drip line. Just be really careful to keep things very clean, and maybe change out the bag and line every 1-2 hatches to avoid introducing infection into the incubator, just like with the sponges, since none of these items can be thoroughly disinfected.

I did end up trying your flannel idea earlier today, only with some of the nicer brand paper towels we have (read: EXPENSIVE. lol). It worked like a charm. I did it at 10 this morning and its now 7pm here and the humidity is still holding. It went up very quickly to 68% with a full open vent and has not wavered all day. Thanks so much for the advice!!

 

[Sydney Acres]

I did end up trying your flannel idea earlier today, only with some of the nicer brand paper towels we have (read: EXPENSIVE. lol). It worked like a charm. I did it at 10 this morning and its now 7pm here and the humidity is still holding. It went up very quickly to 68% with a full open vent and has not wavered all day. Thanks so much for the advice!!

Paper towels do work well -- I used them with my first incubation. I didn't dip an edge in the humidity well, so the wet paper towels only lasted 18-24 hours. But they should wick the water up to increase the evaporative surface very well, and for a reasonable amount of time, if they were continuously fed by the humidity well. Then the humidity should stay stable for a little longer. The flannel would probably last longer, but is not as readily available.

 

[brandy00]

@TattooedMama Do you have any chicks yet!?!