Electric hen

Have finished making the electric hen :)
Cut the wood up, screwed it together and put i few coats of varnish on so I can wipe it down when it gets covered in chick poo! Stuck the heat mat on with gaffer tape. Screwed in the hook eyes.
Sorted
The top, which will be suspended at an angle by chains and hung in the brooder:

The heat mat which the chicks sit underneath:


They use a lot less energy compared to a heat lamp, so less cost, and they're more natural so the chicks can get used to daylight hours etc.
Apparently chicks feather up faster under them, but don't know as yet :)

Hatched

I've got 4 chicks in the incubator!

We got back after the christening, and nothing had happened, and then within 2 minutes 1 hatched, and then 3 others followed :D

A video of one of the quail hatching

The 1st egg to chip still isn't hatched.

Brooder

The brooder:


The eggs are now flat and waiting to hatch, I've put water in the water tray to raise humidity.

Candler

It's finished. It was made from the left overs from the incubator and stuff I found in the garage.
I used wood from the incubator, wire, a plug and I bought a light fitting for 79p.

I cut up 3 rectangles, (2 sides and top), and 2 squares (for the ends). The top piece needs a hole drilled in the top to sit the egg on top of. Then I screwed the 3 rectangles together and glued one end on. The other open end is the end which the light fitting goes onto, and is left loose, in case of a bulb change etc.

The egg sits on the hole on the top. When I use it I put it on a chopping board, so the table doesn't burn.
It doesn't look as good as a bought one, but if it works and for 79p and 1/2 hour, I don't really care.

Hygrometer + Candler

I've bought a digital hygrometer off ebay. It was only £6 including P&P. They measure humidity and this one does temperature too.

I'm trying to make a candler aswell, but it's not really working, I'm using the left overs from the incubator so it looks really bad, but it should still work. A candler lets you shine a light into the eggs so that you can see if there is a chick developing inside of it.

Total Cost

Here's the total cost for the incubator:

You can take the cost of 12V adaptor though, because I used the old iPod speaker power cable, so that's £22 less.

Adaptor Problems :@

I'm really annoyed :( The 12V adaptor I bought has just broken and won't work! I only had 1 bulb on to see how warm it would get, and the adaptor has stopped working.
It was from a little electrical shop in Horncastle and there isn't one near here so can't take it back. I've tried to find the shop on the internet but I can't, I've emailed Uniross to see if I can take it back to a shop near me or send it back to them. Waste of £19!

I am going to have to use my brothers iPod dock cable, 12V 3.5 Amps, which has a dodgy end, but I'll chop it off so it won't matter.

It's Finished!!

It's finally finished and switched on warming up.

I've put it on top of Hughie the Tortoises house, they match each other.

The wired up Thermostat

Now I just need to get the eggs and I can start. :D :D

Built It!

I went round to my Nan's today and Noel helped me to cut the wood and to build the incubator.











That countersink was Noels dads and was used to build spitfire planes :D




It took a fair few hours, and I still need to do the wiring and put the roof on, but its looking more like an incubator :D

Heres the finished(ish) thing:









The top door gets to the eggs and bulbs, and the eggs sit on the mesh you can see through the window.
The bottom door is where the water tray goes to keep humisity up so that the eggs don't dry out and chicks don't stick to their shells.









Thanks Noel :D

I still need to buy a hygrometer.

2 steps closer...

I put a wanted post on freecycle for a computer fan and a hygrometer, and today someone offered me a fan! Thats one less thing I have to find, and it means that there will be no hot and cold spots in the incubator. She is sending it to me in the post :D. (Thanks Jen!)

I have also marked up the wood I'm going to use, I could have had a 50x24x24cm box using just 1 sheet, but I'm using chipboard for the base so how to will be just over 50X30x30cm.

The wood got wet at the bottom (right) but when its varnished it'll b ok.

Now I just need to cut that and the perspex and then I can start to put it all together.

(Oh and the ebay seller emailed and has posted the thermostat :D)

Finally decided

I am the proud new owner of a thermostat. It is one of the assembled models like the ones from Maplins.

Someone recommended asking for the thermistor (temperature sensor) to be on a longer piece of wire so that the main part of the termostat doesn't have to be inside the incubator, and this ebay seller had already thought of that so I bought this one.

The seller provided a simple image of the wiring needed to be done to wire it up in an incubator.

It cost £11 + £2.50 P&P, which is quite good.

I went to the shops today and I bought hinges, door handles and magnets to keep the door shut.

Thermostats

I have been planning to use a room thermostat to control the bulbs inside my incubator, but I don't think they are suitable anymore.

Most of them only go up to 30-35 degrees C, and I need 37.5 degrees C, also the hysteresis (range that the temperature fluctuates) isn't always very good on room thermostats, and eggs need to be kept at a tight temperature.

So now I am either thinking of buying a reptile thermostat off eBay, looking at around £20-30. I know they are good as I have one for Hughie (pictured right), his is a HabiStat Dimming Thermostat.
They only go up to 34 degrees celsius, but to get around this you can put the sensor probe in a cooler part of the incubator, but as there is a fan, there shouldn't really be a cooler part of the incubator.


There is always one of the PCB thermostats (left) which I could use. I won't go for the unassembled ones, as I'm not good at soldering, but you can buy assembled ones. I should be able to wire the thermostat to a heat source and power supply. They run off 12 volts.


I also need to buy a hygrometer, they measure humidity. You can get digital ones (left) or analogue ones. The digital ones are more expensive but I prefer them because they seem more accurate and they also normally have a temperature reading on them too. They need to have a sensor probe on them, and that has to measure humidity, not just the temperature.

Incubator Plans 2

I've coloured in and labelled the drawings to see what it should eventually look like.

It is made of wood; has 2 doors, one to get the main part with eggs in, one to get to the water pan; has a perspex viewing window; 2 light bulbs to provide heat.
I may put in it a small computer fan to provide circulation and keep constant heat throughout, I may also use a thermostat but haven't decided which type yet.
The eggs sit on the mesh which you can see in the second picture.

The 3D, labelled and coloured in versions of:

the front with both doors closed

and the inside with neither of the doors on.

I already have wood and perspex from building chickens + tortoises houses, so I will be using that to build it out of.

My Incubator Plans

I've started to draw up the plans for my Incubator.

The Front with the doors closed:

The inside with no door on:

Thermostat

Mine will be made of wood, be heated by light bulbs, have a water pan in it to make sure it has enough humidity etc.
I'm using 2 bulbs just in case 1 of them blows when I'm out or asleep, so the other one will still be on and keep the eggs warm.

I'm still not sure of what to control the light bulbs with. Hughie the tortoise has one of these to control his light bulb but I payed about £50 for that so they are a bit on the expensive side.

Then there are these which dim normal lamps, so I'd just have to turn it on, find the right temperature and leave the bulb on all the time.

JamesH on the Omlet forum showed me this which is a thermostat from Maplins, only £5.99, but they need soldering and I don't trust myself to do that. But it's always a possibility.

Or I could try a room thermostat.

So I'm a bit confused.

What type?

There are loads of types to choose from, R-com incubators look good but they are really expensive. £60 is the cheapest and that's only for 3 eggs :O. They go up to £280 for 20 eggs.


The more I read I think I'll make an Incubator myself. The easiest looks to make one from wood, but there are other things like, should I have a fan, how big to make it, what to heat it with etc. I don't want to spend too much money on it, as I could buy a 2nd hand one, but making one would be more fun.

I've learnt quite a few things from looking at other peoples incubators and the Omlet Forum is really good for asking questions and seeing how other people do things.

Incubator

So I've been thinking about it for a while now, and instead of buying in some quail, and having all this time spare during the holidays, I would like to hatch some.
I've been reading about all sorts of incubators on tinternet. Now for some serious reading to decide what I want to make it out of.

So far I've seen wooden, plastic, cool box, polystyrene, cardboard box, and even aquarium homemade incubators, and also the 100's of incubators that you can buy.








My Quail