Our first ever incubation.

[Sustained]

First peep!!! Fingers crossed.

Good luck!! I'm on my first hatching adventure too but have a week to go! Hope your hatch is or did go great and

 

[Stewieb71]

Well, a day and a half late most probably because of the power problem, I have come home to find 5 chicks in the incubator.

First two out this morning.

In the brooder.

 

[Stewieb71]

Two of the chicks hatching.

 

[Sustained]

Well, a day and a half late most probably because of the power problem, I have come home to find 5 chicks in the incubator.

First two out this morning.


In the brooder.

So cute!!!

Congrats!

 

[gus2pp]

Congratulations!! How many chicks hatched total?

 

[Stewieb71]

The final tally from the 12 eggs was; 2 not fertile, one quitter halfway through, one didn't hatch (died around 4 days after expected hatch day. Still wasn't ready to hatch with its stomach out.) and 8 hatched. They started hatching a day late and finished at 3 days late.
The message here is don't stress too much about power outages and temperature drops. We had an unprecedented 4 power outs in 3 weeks. Temperatures dropped considerably for long periods of time even during lockdown.
Given our inexperience and an untested incubator, I was expecting none (but was hoping for 12). Originally I thought I should have set 18 eggs as ideally I want to have 5 hens. Now I'm guessing we'll have 3, 4 or at best 5. Looks like I'll have to incubate some more.

 

[Toddrick]

Congrats! I am on day 7 right now, and candling looks good, even on refrigerated and cracked/superglued eggs. These little boogers can tolerate a lot of issues.

My one question for you is about partitioning your bator. How do you get enough heat? It must run almost constantly, right? I have my bulb right over the eggs, and had to go with a 75w just to reach 99 degrees. Mine seems to run 5 minutes on and 5 off roughly. Maybe it's because my bulb fixture is outside the box, and wastes a lot of heat. But I'm mainly trying to figure out a better way to circulate the heat evenly, since mine is truly only 99 under the light, and 93 six inches away. You must have accomplished great heat circulation, since your heat source was separated completely. Does the computer cover heat up and store/spread the heat? Is that how it works?

 

[Stewieb71]

The incubator is partitioned with the back of an old computer which has holes right across it. I left the old fan attached that used to draw air into the computer to keep it cool. By coincidence the finned aluminium heat sink off the computer cpu just happened to fit to that fan so I put it on. It's probably not necessary. The fan runs continuously.
The light comes on. Heats up the heat sink. Air is drawn from the egg compartment passing over the heat then passes passively back through the rest of the holes back to the eggs. It cycles about two minutes on, one minute off. It was pretty cold out there. Not quite down to freezing but not far off at times.
Also I put the only air vent holes on the heater side so that any fresh air was heated first before getting to the eggs.
What you can't see is the containers under the eggs with 8 litres of water in them. Water has really good thermal properties. It holds heat better than nearly anything. Ever rocks or metal. Although it did take a good day to heat up with the light bulb.

 

[Stewieb71]

Our peeps at two weeks of age:

 

[Stewieb71]

Three months on and they're not so little anymore. Roosters crowing. Free ranging. Happy friendly chooks.