My first Quail. A mini blog.

[pac]

Whew.

I've got an instant read thermometer with a fresh battery and I just checked against boiling water, the probe thermometer that is supposed to be controlled by an actual thermostat and turn off and on the heat lamp, and a good old mercury thermometer that I used for chickens before.
And all three read differently.

And not only that, the lizard heat element I have barely projects any heat. Not nearly as far as the lamp. But I need it for the probe and the meat thermometer to read 84-87 or so. The mercury is reading right at 95F. And the mercury is what I went by before. With just one lamp.

Looks like I'll be doing a lot of watching to see if the quail are either huddling or avoiding the middle area. But I want things just right when they are first moved over to the brooder and don't know which thermometers to go by.

ETA: The room they are in is running in the seventies.

 

[pac]

Still playing around with the brooder heat. I can't seem to hit 95F in the brooder.
I ordered another Govee to see what that reads. I might move the lizard heat lamp into the brooder. Dealing with freshly hatched tiny birds has me a bit nervous.

 

[pac]

Lizard lamp inside the brooder seems to work. I used it by itself without the infra red. When I get the Govee tomorrow I'll check the right side of the brooder and double check under the lamp.
But right now the probe for the controller is under the reflector, but not under the element itself.

The controller. Top to bottom is current probe temp, power on at 92 and power off at 93. That was not my final setting.

Currently the power turns the heat on at 92.5 and off at 93.
With the residual heat in the ceramic element that gives me a range of 91.7 to 95.3.
I might bump up the 93 to 93.5, but it doesn't take much to all of a sudden hit 100. As I found out when I had it set to 95. And if I get a decent hatch they will create heat themselves or get more under the element. In theory

 

[FatherFalcon]

Looks great…! I feel the same with all the worries… mostly try to make it simpler than necessary. The environment around them should be anywhere near 85 is good if the chicks get cold, they’ll get closer to the light if they get hot It’ll move away. I’d always just make sure that they have a hot side and a cold side.

I noticed that infrared lights are good for atmosphere and that the heat lamp lights are good for spot heating. I’ve kept my light about 18 inches above and the spot that it focuses on gets no hotter than 95°

I hope this helps alleviate some worries.
Here are some chill vibes from San Diego…

 

[pac]

Thanks @FatherFalcon

My next "worry" is the water vessel. One 1g as opposed to two 1qt size. I'm thinking of going with the two smaller ones. The footprint would be smaller. Or if the hatch is really bad I'll just go with one 1qt.

The closer it gets to lockdown the more I think on things, lol.

 

[pac]

I saw a video last night of someone gathering her quail chicks and moving them into the brooder. And it got me thinking...
So I made this.

I took a roll of flashing I had and let it unfurl until it was the right size to fit over the 360, so when I take off the lid I don't have a bunch of chicks jumping ship.

I had seen videos of moving the incubator into the brooder, but I don't want to have to catch any chicks that still might be wet. Or miss one. This seems like it might be more controlled.
In theory.

 

[GoosesGeeses]

Following!!

 

[pac]

I dropped the 360 temp setting by half a degree late yesterday. I didn't like pushing the high side of 100.5 all day. This morning it was humming right along at 99.5F. I saw another YT vid where they said the temp on the 360 compared to the Govee is half to one degree difference and that's right where mine seems to be.
The humidity had raised to 40% going by the Govee though. I found that odd that it would suddenly go up a few percent with nothing else changed.
I'm still waffling on if I want to leave it in the incubator through the hatch to keep monitoring. But I've been looking at the 360's display enough that I know what the difference would be.

I'm going to do another trial run in the brooder today. I purchased another Govee for the brooder so I can more easily move it and track the temps in the different areas.

This time Saturday I'll be candling eggs

 

[pac]

I got everything "mise en place" today for tomorrow's candling and lockdown. And I had a thought...

Rather than removing a few eggs, replacing the lid, candling, remove lid, replace eggs (hopefully) and repeat. Why not put a heat lamp in the area? That will certainly keep 34 eggs warm while I quickly candle them all at once. And it will give me some red light to see what I'm doing. Hopefully without affecting my determining if an egg lights up like a light bulb. But it will be dark outside anyway, as I'll be doing this about 5:20.

So I did a quick trial run so I know where to put the lamp to roughly maintain 99.5 in the area around the incubator. I'll go ahead and fill side B with water before I start.

Pretty excited for tomorrow morning