Anyone here incubate chicken eggs?

[buickanddeere]

Have hatched several batches but I am still amazed how smart and hen and her backside is when it comes to incubating eggs.

 

[TheSpoon]

I was in a poultry 4H club growing up and incubating eggs was always my favorite. We did everything; quail, pheasants, ducks, chickens, peacock. Never did have an incubator big enough for emu (the eggs, not the college) though. A chicken coop is on my project list, hopefully this summer.

 

[Egon]

We let our hens do the incubating... But that's a great project for you to do for your girl. My wife (a teacher) brings eggs into school for a hatching project also. Kids love it!

That's the easy way! Hens can incubate all kinds of other eggs, even geese eggs.

 

[jwmorris]

First one pipped about 4:03 and 4 more by 6:40.

 

[nybirdman]

Just about to set my second incubator(354 pheasant eggs) and should
have enough eggs in four days for the third.I am getting about 80 eggs
per day.

 

[jwmorris]

21 days is a long time for a 4 year old to have to wait but I think it was worth it.

 

[muddstopper]

I used to raise chickens and sell hatching eggs. I only dealth with the rare and endangered breeds. At one time I was shipping hatching eggs all over the US. I spent a lot of time and money trying to build the better incubator. Even built a few cabinet incubators using walnut and other expensive woods. I had a German engineer built a electronic thermostat that could maintain temps to within less than 1/2 degree. He figured out what I wanted it for and and then started selling them on Ebay. Having paid him for the design, I never received the first thermostat. I know he sold lots of them, but not much I could do about it. I also had a buddy build me a automatic turner control and used a little low voltage gear motor to tilt the egg trays. My buddy also ended up building me a electronic thermostat, but altho it worked ok, it was subect to temperature variations as humidity levels rose and fell. Electronics dont like moisture. I found that the wafer thermostats, Wafer Thermostat, HovaBator, 3122, to be about as good as any of the electronic ones out there. I installed the wafer thermostat in my cabinet incubators and hatchers and stopped haveing large temperature swings. Anyways, I tried several of the hoverbator styrofoam incubators, but didnt like the hatch rates or the attention needed to insure good hatch rates. I finally bought one of the entry level Brinsea incubators, Octagon 2 ADVANCE digital egg incubator. That thing I believe would hatch a rock and I had plenty of near 100% hatches out of it. I still have it for when I finally retire and get back into raising chicks. I sold off all my birds as well as the coops a couple of years ago, but I will still occasionally hatch out a setting for friends.

 

[jwmorris]

The temp was easy, mine vaired four tents of a degree F but I had the hystersis on the PID controller set at .2 F.

The sponge and water wasn't as consistant as I wanted so I swapped it for a humidity control activating a humidifie, the water bucket was long gone so I just stuck it inside a plastic juice container I cut the top off of. It controlls humidity to 1% of set point.

 

[muddstopper]

The temp was easy, mine vaired four tents of a degree F but I had the hystersis on the PID controller set at .2 F.

The sponge and water wasn't as consistant as I wanted so I swapped it for a humidity control activating a humidifie, the water bucket was long gone so I just stuck it inside a plastic juice container I cut the top off of. It controlls humidity to 1% of set point.

I bought a few of those fog machine wafers and hooked up a humidity controller. My buddy made that too. when humidity dropped, the fogger would make smoke and could quickly raise the humidity. I used a 2 gal water bottle I bought at Wally world and connected it to the water tray using a float valve. I never had any problems running out of water before the hatch was due. I did drown a few eggs before I figured out the proper settings. again, the humidity raised heck with the electronic thermostat. I eventually did away with everything electronic and just used a large water tray with sponge, along with the water bottle and float valve. Once i figured out the proper water surface area needed to maintain humidity, it was just about set it and forget it. Keeping it simple was a lot easier than trying to reinvent the wheel, but I gave it a heck of a shot.

 

[jwmorris]

The PID and humidity control use thermocouples to measure the temp. I am using "K" type, what my friend gave me they have a range up to 1200 F or so and are stainless steel. The electronics are outside the area you are measuring. Not sure how high the humidity control will work but I wouldn't expect either controller to last as long if they were mounted inside vs out.