Which incubator to use in the uk?

[Mellowmalt]

just a quick update that having seen the flimsy build quality of this yellow incubator I took another risk but ordered through Amazon and got myself a different incubator and so far I have to say I am very impressed. The incubator arrived in under 24 hours, is built really solid, the egg turner is Amazing and to top it off the incubator can be calibrated. For under £50 I am over the moon my impulse buy has turned out so good. The candling light nearly blinded me so is also very strong

The only downside is the water tray doesn't hold much water and is difficult to top up, ie you have to open the incubator but I can live with that. Still a very good incubator. Just testing it now but looking at the size of the fan I don't think I will have any problems, everything working as it should. Built in alarm that can be adjusted, egg timer interval can be adjusted also.

Ps this is the incubator https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08FT9QD1B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



Edit: So I've tested the incubator and it is running great. I've added a bit more insulation around it without blocking the air hole on top as it only uses 30watts to heat it which is not a lot in incubator terms but it is enough in a warm room or if you add a bit more insulation. I've calibrated it to -0.6 degrees C or another way to put it is that it runs 0.6 degrees C too cold so either increase the set temperature by 0.6 degrees or calibrate it in the P0 menu by -0.6 (although this will vary from incubator to incubator - straight out the box this would run too cold if I hadn't checked it with an external thermometer but each one might need to be calibrated slightly differently). I have added a picture of the temperature and humidity readings - I might add a small cup inside the incubator to maintain humidity as I don't think the trays at the bottom are very good but maintaining a high humidity of 70% is a breeze so that is great - always have the ventilation hole open all the way. I don't know why they added a slider to close it off although initially it helps to raise temperatures and as I mentioned this incubator needs all the help getting the temp up fast but I think it is absolutely fine - look at the temp chart I'm attaching, the humidity spike shows me opening the incubator and the temp going back up again.


ps there are bigger models of this going up to 24 and 36 eggs which use 35watts and 40 watts respectively. They are only a bit more expensive and they have an additional humidity display so that might be more suitable for some but this one holds 16 large eggs and a lot more small ones which is all I need...
The 36 egg incubator with added humidity sensor:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/KKTECT-Incubator-Automatic-Transparent-Temperature/dp/B0861ZLFTV/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=36+egg+incubator&qid=1614459134&sr=8-6&th=1

Edit2: I was looking at a lot of different ones but like has been mentioned you can never be too sure how well it would work. This one for example looks a lot more fancy, uses 80 watts, is 4 times as big, only £20 more expensive and had a countdown for egg turning, monitors humidity and temp but then look at the fan and you know you will have problems!! Considering this incubator is 4 times bigger that fan will not be enough
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/48Egg-Au...237420&hash=item1aac211525:g:qOYAAOSwveheRCp-

 

[penkwolf]

For some reason i have stopped getting notifications from this thread.

Glad you have finally sorted something, be good for us to see what our hatch rates are like after we have candled. When are you putting eggs in? I am picking mine up saturday.

At least we can both review success rate and give tips to improve these cheaper incubators haha! Lets hope we are both successful!

 

[Mellowmalt]

hi penk, I don't think I am getting notifications either but we have a result. Ebay have promised me a refund and they are saying I can keep the incubator.

Might use it as a brooder or something.

I am testing the Amazon incubator and it is keeping temps steady all out within 0.3 degrees but I did have to drill some additional air holes as humidity was staying too high (not enough ventilation).
I will be putting some eggs in on Thursday.

I'll test the other incubator and provide my thoughts as I haven't even plugged it in yet - thinking I would be returning it.

 

[Mellowmalt]

@penkwolf Hi mate, I am testing your incubator now. Initial reaction is I really do not like it unfortunately.
I believe in leaving the polystyrene sleeve on an incubator as it reduces the electric bill but with this one there already start the first problems for me. The ventilation holes are at the bottom of the incubator. I placed it on a table and instantly noticed the holes got sealed shut when left in the polystyrene sleeve. If one takes the incubator out of the sleeve then the holes are free but this is no good so I've had to raise the incubator on some blocks so the holes are not sealed. I thought this was important mentioning to you as your eggs will not be able to breathe if you use the polystyrene (as you should) but don't add a little gap underneath.
Ok my next niggle. With the polystyrene sleeve this incubator is in fact very powerful at 60 watts. It heats up in 5 minutes so ridiculously fast but that is where the good news ends. It then consistently heats 0.5 degrees over the set temperature. This is terrible. The heating element is far too strong. I could try it without the sleeve but I'm just liking none of it so far.
I don't need to look at the eggs all the time so without the sleeve this is probably powered just right as the added heat loss would compensate for the strong heating element but I will see how my external thermometer responds, I might get away with setting the temp 0.5 degrees lower and if it overshoots by 0.5 degrees the temp might just be spot on, fingers crossed (although I don't really like it for further reasons lol).
It is always going to produce uneven heat spots in the incubator. The top left corner will always be the coldest and the bottom left corner will always be the hottest with the right side of the incubator (where the controls are) being the closest to the set temperature (in theory anyway). So far temps are anything but even.
The egg turner is terrible in my opinion. It rotates to the left, then settles back on the upright position. The next turn it turns to the right and settles in an upright position again. It might shake things about a bit but it's not how I like my eggs to be turned. I think it is a bit pathetic what the egg turner does. It actually seems like the led light cable is interfering with the egg turner on mine so one tray is not turning like it should.
I also believe the 4 tiny 2mm holes as the only ventilation is too little. For 24 eggs I don't think that is enough and it shows, I've only filled half the trays and humidity is up to 63% and rising. This one needs more ventilation holes like the other one! Or bigger ventilation holes at the bottom. I will see what I can do about that.
Ok so the plus points:
It has a humidity alarm (although it is very slow to pick up changes)
It can be calibrated. I've had to adjust mine by 0.5 degrees so far
You don't need to disconnect the egg turner when opening the incubator - this has to be my biggest annoyance with the other incubator
You can fill the water trays very easily from an external hole.
viewing the eggs is easy.

I will update once it has been running for 24 hours and I get more accurate readings. Not sure I'd trust it with any eggs at the moment...

 

[als77]

@penkwolf Hi mate, I am testing your incubator now. Initial reaction is I really do not like it unfortunately.
I believe in leaving the polystyrene sleeve on an incubator as it reduces the electric bill but with this one there already start the first problems for me. The ventilation holes are at the bottom of the incubator. I placed it on a table and instantly noticed the holes got sealed shut when left in the polystyrene sleeve. If one takes the incubator out of the sleeve then the holes are free but this is no good so I've had to raise the incubator on some blocks so the holes are not sealed. I thought this was important mentioning to you as your eggs will not be able to breathe if you use the polystyrene (as you should) but don't add a little gap underneath.
Ok my next niggle. With the polystyrene sleeve this incubator is in fact very powerful at 60 watts. It heats up in 5 minutes so ridiculously fast but that is where the good news ends. It then consistently heats 0.5 degrees over the set temperature. This is terrible. The heating element is far too strong. I could try it without the sleeve but I'm just liking none of it so far.
I don't need to look at the eggs all the time so without the sleeve this is probably powered just right as the added heat loss would compensate for the strong heating element but I will see how my external thermometer responds, I might get away with setting the temp 0.5 degrees lower and if it overshoots by 0.5 degrees the temp might just be spot on, fingers crossed (although I don't really like it for further reasons lol).
It is always going to produce uneven heat spots in the incubator. The top left corner will always be the coldest and the bottom left corner will always be the hottest with the right side of the incubator (where the controls are) being the closest to the set temperature (in theory anyway). So far temps are anything but even.
The egg turner is terrible in my opinion. It rotates to the left, then settles back on the upright position. The next turn it turns to the right and settles in an upright position again. It might shake things about a bit but it's not how I like my eggs to be turned. I think it is a bit pathetic what the egg turner does. It actually seems like the led light cable is interfering with the egg turner on mine so one tray is not turning like it should.
I also believe the 4 tiny 2mm holes as the only ventilation is too little. For 24 eggs I don't think that is enough and it shows, I've only filled half the trays and humidity is up to 63% and rising. This one needs more ventilation holes like the other one! Or bigger ventilation holes at the bottom. I will see what I can do about that.
Ok so the plus points:
It has a humidity alarm (although it is very slow to pick up changes)
It can be calibrated. I've had to adjust mine by 0.5 degrees so far
You don't need to disconnect the egg turner when opening the incubator - this has to be my biggest annoyance with the other incubator
You can fill the water trays very easily from an external hole.
viewing the eggs is easy.

I will update once it has been running for 24 hours and I get more accurate readings. Not sure I'd trust it with any eggs at the moment...

Have you tried covering the lid with a sweater? (without having it in the polystyrene) That seemed to help a lot with mine

 

[Mellowmalt]

Hi als, so yeah I've tried a sweater. Any incubator takes a while to heat up so humidity has gone to 78% after 12 hours with half the tray filled - like predicted.
Temps surprisingly have stabilized but I would never trust the top right corner so I'd avoid putting any eggs there.
The biggest problem I have after only 12 hours is that the egg turner won't turn off. It's now on autopilot turning every 10 seconds and I can't turn it off.
REsetting it does nothing. Maybe unplugging it would reset it but imagine this were to happen with eggs in ...
Not impressed.

Nope unplugging it does nothing, it just keeps rotating constantly now. Worst chinese electronics I've come across this year

 

[als77]

Not sure if the top right corner is the worst spot - at least that spot is close to the sensor and *should* be rather stable. Mine behaved different than yours though - it would not go much above the set temperature, but rather fluctuate on the downside instead, so for mine top right corner seemed the best


Do you have HU and HD as settings on yours? Mine doesn't (although the instructional manual refers to them), I only have H0 which I'm not sure what is supposed to do... HU and HD is supposed to regulate when heating starts and stops, so if you have those settings on yours then maybe you can adjust them to have the bator not go above the set temperature (I tried googling what the H0 on mine is supposed to do, but no luck)


Do you have a lot of thermometers to check the bator? penkwolf tested different spots than I did, and had different results - so not sure exactly where (and how big) the cold spots are.

Mine seemed to turn as it should (although it refused to reset the number of days). Turning every two hours I believe

 

[Mellowmalt]

PS: After Ebay promised to help me guess what? That was the last representative, the next representative had no idea what I was talking about.

So one thing I have learnt is using cheap incubators is so stressful!!!!

The seller ended up offering me a £10 refund. Considering the egg turner is broke that is no good. This seller just does not want the incubator back which is frustrating for me and Ebay have guaranteed me once again that I will get this resolved within 5 days. Be careful who you buy from...

As to the other incubator also stress unfortunately

I have been testing it since it arrived and things started off so well... I placed an egg in there to test it and the egg is still alive however last night things started to go wrong big time. The heating element started to heat on one side far more than the other side. I had a temperature difference of 1 whole degree C from left to right. I was panicking, I started drilling air holes to compensate but the problem just kept getting worse till I figured out the heating element was heating on one side more than the other now. Cheap components?

Well for one egg it is okish. I have moved the egg and am monitoring that side of the incubator but long term I would not trust the Amazon incubator.

It's also interesting we had such varying different experiences with the heating element of the first incubator.

So the egg in the picture is internally pipping now, I've been testing the incubator during lockdown and when you suddenly see temps spike by 1 degree you start to panic.

Fingers crossed:

these are the initial drill holes I made (before I panicked and added another 4 unnecessary holes)


And the pipping egg:



So ps I would not recommend either incubator! For me it is ok, I can replace the heating element and will still keep the incubator as most of the components is good, just a shame they skimped on a decent heating wire.

 

[als77]

I've only hatched once, but I think we (I'm including myself! lol) are too worried about different temperatures; The first week on incubation I probably had a temperature difference of 2C! (up towards 2.6C) the whole week! The second week I got it down to 0.5C (from what I could see that is - I'm assuming there weren't worse cold spots than what I had discovered). For lock-down I messed up BIG time and had horrible temperature differences even across a small area (I tried to gather the eggs in one spot - that didn't work to well when the first one hatched and played sibling soccer... lol).

Yet, 9 out of my 16 fertile eggs hatched all by themselves - from all areas in the bator! 2 more hatched with assistance, and 1 got shrink-wrapped because of my mess-up...

Seems to me that 1C will not be an issue (unless it is 1C ABOVE the set temperature), although it might affect when they hatch. Not ideal of course, but probably not a major problem.

 

[Mellowmalt]

Hey als, when it comes to incubating I don't think there are many experts tbh, we are all experimenting amateurs. Think about it. I've kept chickens for 30 years but I have only incubated a handful of times as chickens live for 10 years. So all the experts that have incubated more or even attempt to incubate over 16 eggs, where do all the chicks go? I don't own a farm and keeping my brooder warm costs a hell of a lot and needs a lot of space! So as such I incubate when I need new chickens and that does not happen often luckily...
This attempt I tried to lower temps in the final week by 0.3 degrees which seems to be working just fine.
Fluctuating temps don't always have negative results but they can do. I just lost an egg last week that I am 99% was my fault but the eggs next to it survived. So the steadier you can keep things the better. I am completely OCD so I am constantly checking to make sure when I incubate, the steadier things stay the better the results should be (or the less likely something will go wrong)

This year I have been focussing solely on bantam eggs and I can guarantee you bantam eggs are far harder than a regular sized egg. With regular sized eggs it will take 4 times longer to overheat them..

My success rate with bantam eggs has been far lower than what I am used to so far although most of that was due to poor post handling I am guessing. Smaller eggs are more fragile it seems.

Anyway at the end of the day it is the equipment we use that will make all the difference. I just didn't want to fork out loads of money. Buying cheap has ended up costing me though as I had to buy twice.

I also had to make adjustments, drilling air holes, I will have to swap the heating element since it is inferior and I'm going to use a big polystyrene box to stick the incubator in in future to help maintain temps - yes I am that OCD and I hate when things do go wrong.

PS: I am really glad you got yours to work so well for you.