World Egg Day Hatchalong!(October 12, 2012 is World Egg Day!)

[Nomibear]

Wow, I was looking for this thread, but it got buried!. Hope nobody minds a bump!
Gotta figure out how to hatch by October 12 and set another batch on October 10th??? With only one small home made bator, LOL. Wanna do the Halloween hatch too!

Ok, it looks like a lot of you have made homemade Bators. What is yours like? If it's something I can do for Cheap, and Not to hard....

For those of you with Homemade Bators, what are your hatchrates like? Did you buy a auto turner? Or hand turn? If you hand turn, how many times a day?

 

[Quyen Le]

Put 180 eggs in my home made cabinet incubator for the first time so I can't say anything about the hatch rate but I hope for a higher yield. I build the egg turner fron relays, gear motor and timer.I have schematic here if you want to build one yourself. I wonder if 10/12 we put eggs in or 10/12 is the hatching day?

 

[Nomibear]

I'm pretty sure that was going to be hatch day. I thought we were going to set them sometime in Sept. It said In the first pg of the thread I believe.

 

[cluck-cluck]

Ok, it looks like a lot of you have made homemade Bators. What is yours like? If it's something I can do for Cheap, and Not to hard....
For those of you with Homemade Bators, what are your hatchrates like? Did you buy a auto turner? Or hand turn? If you hand turn, how many times a day?

Sorry, I've been busy getting ready for a trip! Mine is a cheap cooler, with a hardware cloth base/protector from the light bulb and I used an electric water heater thermostat and computer fan. The whole setup still cost around $35, maybe more? If you can find one on Craigslist, you can probably get a nicer hovebator (sp?) for $40, and save yourself the trouble. I had to make it, I am that kind of person, see if I can make it and get it to work, LOL. But seriously, you might do better to purchase a used one!

Basically, I made mine like this one:

I then added the fan (made it go at an angle to have better air circulation, as I see a lot of people put them right against the side or lid of the incubator) and added the thermostat. If you can get the temp just right with the right size bulb, that's great, but you'll have a lot of flux with the temperature of your house if it's not maintained a constant temperature (like my house is made of paper, if it's hot outside, it's hot inside, if it's cold outside, it's cold inside, LOL) This makes it hard to maintain, and why I used the thermostat. But the thermostat still requires a lot of monitoring. You really need to mess with it a few days to see what you need to do to maintain the temp. I had to adjust it pretty much every 4 hours, and did it at night too, so that's a big pain in the butt for most people, but kinda fits into my insomniac lifestyle, LOL

Oh, I also used a more square shaped cooler and I put my water trays (two sushi plates) under the light bulb in order to make more space for my eggs. Also, I now think a side window would be better, as I could set the digital thermostat vertically then and have even more space for eggs. But it all worked out in the end ;P

 

[Habibs Hens]

i may not be able to join after all

i had to set eggs as i might have to loose my cockerals

so i set 6 eggs that have hatched and another 24 eggs due on 12th sept

totaling my complete flock to 60 chicken so i wont be able to hatch more out

even after culling males i will have a large enough flock

 

[cluck-cluck]

That's ok, silverfox, you can still regale us with pictures of your cuties and stories of their antics!

Our first 5 chicks are so darn entertaining! I love them! Some will be cockerals, so we'll be losing them, therefore I know I'll need more layers when I get back. On the one hand, it's nice to have the chick phase going on here, but on the other hand it'll be 4 months before we get any eggs! Oh well! LOL

 

[cmtigger]

I Really Want to join you guys! Thing is I don't have an incubator yet! I haven't heard the best reports from the TS version, and it would still cost me $80 with a auto turner. And the good ones are a good chunk more.... I've been stalking Craigslist, but nothing in showing up in my area...

I just had 15 out of 26 quail eggs hatch a day early today using the LG incubator from TS. The first batch didn't go well, but there was a heat wave after I started and the temp spiked a couple of times. (I don't have AC) I am surprised that these hatched as well as they did, as they were collected during the heat wave, and we'll see if any more hatch in the next few days too.

 

[Sumatra503]

Hatch day is october 12th. I will be making a page for the hatch for the info and updates, since we can't edit the first post anymore.

How do people feel about an egg swap for this. Probably not a mystery swap, but a swapping thread to aquire the eggs you want for the hatch.

 

[guinea fowl galore]

Sounds fun.
As long as nothing comes up then I should be able to participate.

Sumatra503, I'm pretty sure you can edit your first post. You just have to press the "edit" at the top of the page under the thread title.

 

[Sumatra503]

The option doesn't even come up. I've also heard others complain about.

Still open for contest ideas. If you have any PM them to me and I'll see if it's something that will work.