Good Brands of incubators?!

[tawnyleona]

I have the Yescom32. It is cheap and has some flaws but we've made it work.

The pros are it has auto turners that work well, holds 32 eggs, has a fan, and digital temp and humidity.

The cons: The lid doesn't seal tightly. It's a flexible piece of plastic. My husband made me a gasket to help with the seal.

It has wells in the sides that chicks can fall into. The ones for water I just put sponges into, but the the ones off to the sides I stuffed with that squishy grip shelf liner.

Lastly, it's pretty hard to add water into as you go. It's not so bad if you can get the lid on tight enough as you don't lose much during incubation really, but if you overfill, it all comes pouring out the holes in the bottom. I added a sponge in the bottom as well to soak up any over spillage.

Our first hatch didn't go well because of the above problems. I made the adjustments I mentioned and did another incubation.

This is how it looked prior to lockdown on my last hatch. After all of my adjustments, we had a 95% hatch rate, which is pretty good for a cheap incubator and some cheap adjustments.

 

[Brian-Elma-NY]

Dumb question: does anyone still use those old, antique wooden incubators from 50-100+ years ago, like: Cyphers, Model, Essex, Buffalo, and so many more? If so, what are your reasons? Thx!

 

[Sydney Acres]

When deciding on an incubator, you need to first answer 2 questions -- how many eggs do you want to hatch at once, and what is your budget. Those two questions will narrow down your options quicker than any other parameters. Once you've got the group of incubators that meets those two criteria, then you can compare all the specific features. Buying the best quality incubator you can afford will usually be worth the investment.

I would recommend that you use caution when buying/using any of the Chinese-made incubators, commonly offered on Amazon or eBay. They claim to have all the great features and they are inexpensive, but they are inexpensive because they use cheap electronics. These cheap electronics are less likely to work properly, and they have been linked to several house fires. The money you save buying the Chinese knock-off is unlikely to cover the deductible on your homeowner's/renter's insurance.

My recommendations for table incubators are Hovabator 1502, Hovabator Genesis 1588, Incu-view, R-com Max 20 (or 50) , and Brinsea Ovation 28 (or 56) depending on your budget and features needed. I have the R-com Max 20, and love it!!

 

[Jack Speese]

I can't remember whether I posted to this thread before, but I've owned two incubators, a round styrofoam no frills still air manual turning Hovabator and a forced air automatic turning Redwood incubator. Of course the Redwood is an outstanding machine and gives excellent hatches, especially for duck eggs, but because of the forced air and the high, I dare say gouging cost of rural electric it was anything but economical to run. I ended up selling it for that reason. For hatching eggs of chickens and species other than ducks, that no frills Hovabator was fantastic. Economical, simple, not a lot of stuff that can potentially break. But for duck eggs it was another story, you simply can't do the amount of turning required for a good hatch unless you are there 24/7. I ended up helping out most ducklings that I hatched in it out of the shells. In terms of numbers, I still got good duckling hatches and they all survived fine, but I had to help 90% out of the shells. If you are trying to hatch duck eggs, I'd definitely recommend an automatic turner. But for chicken eggs, I personally would save on the added expense.