Karasu
鳥
I've been looking into upgrading my incubation equipment, and I'm curious what criteria folks here use when determining which category to select from. I've been leaning towards thermocouples myself, given that you can find units accurate to within +/- 0.5*F on Amazon for a fairly cheap price. As shown on the chart I shamelessly ripped from someone else, they do have their downsides, but I think they seem adequate for the job.
However, unless you're forking over the three or four digit prices for a NIST certified instrument, there are no guarantees on that accuracy figure. I'm lucky enough to have access to a dry well calibrator which I'm intending to use on whatever upgraded equipment I purchase and maybe my old fish tank thermometers from Walmart that are probably 4 years past their usable limit. I generally run ice water cal checks on my thermometers every year and toss those that perform poorly, but this has the distinct disadvantage of not being within the range of its use temperature and I've noted significant sensitivity drift between 32*F and 100*F so I'm hesitant to incubate based on shoddy quality control practices.
Fair warning - any attempt to convince me that hens don't bother with this and thus I should not either will fall on deaf ears.
