Will noise or vibration effect hatching?

[crowsnestfarms]

I have it heating and have gone through several cycles. I am using one 100 watt and one 75 watt bulb for heat. It takes this thing a LONG time to heat up, like 5 or 6 hours. I am using a hot water heater thermostat and am having difficulty getting it set properly. It seems to always go a degree or two hot or cold depending whether I adjust up or down. I have it very close but not close enough. Ideally, I would use a wafer thermostat setup on this but I have to use what I have for now. I did run across an old waterbed heater thermostat, has anyone ever used one to control the lights for heat and was able to keep the temps stable? I may end up trying that.

 

[crowsnestfarms]

UPDATE: I did end up switching to the waterbed heater thermostat. After many changes and adjustments I got the whole thing to hold a temp range of 98 to 100 degrees. I know this is a wide range still for an incubator but this is actual air temps, the temp of the eggs inside will not vary nearly so much and besides the heat kicks back on right at 98 and it doesn't take it long to heat back up to at least 99. I went ahead and set 3 dozen eggs in it last Sunday so two more days and I will candle them to see how they are doing. I know 3 dz is quite a lot for a test run but they were available so why not? I think after this run I will tweak the thermostat a tiny bit in order to raise the average temp from about 99 up to 99.5, it is doing well so far and the way I understand it, the lower average should only cause them to hatch 12-24 hours later than they normally would. Any input or questions would be awesome, I have never attempted a project quite like this so I am excited to see it working! Will try to give another update late Sunday or Monday after these eggs are candled and I can give some results after the first 7 days.

 

[crowsnestfarms]

At first candling I had 4 eggs which were not fertile and two that had died early. At second candling I lost one more so it was 29 eggs left to go into lockdown. 23 eggs out of the 29 hatched and that figures out to near 80% hatch rate. I am very pleased with the performance and outcome of this home made incubator. I had never hatched eggs before much less built an incubator. If I can do this successfully so can anyone else! Go ahead and give it a shot.