# Incubator advice



## wendykn1 (Jul 19, 2010)

I am thinking about getting an incubator. What is a good one that isn't to expensive. I have someone bringing me some eggs that she don't want. I want to be prepared in case my pairs won't sit. I don't want the woman to toss fertile eggs away.


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## Darkel777 (Jun 7, 2013)

All of the good ones are cheap and made out of styrofoam or way too expensive. I encourage making your own using a cooler, a lamp kit, a reptile environment thermostat, Hardware Cloth, and a simple USB minifan you can get at Walmart.

Cooler $20 (more if you want to add a turner and need a bigger one)
Reptile Thermostat $10
USB minifan $10
Lamp Kit $8
Hardware Cloth $36

That's a $84 incubator that's sturdier, will last longer, and can be customized with a turner of your choice. This is just what I used to make mine and most of it I already had, this is just buying from scratch.

Here are more custom incubator plans to give you a better idea of how to do it.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/homemade-chicken-egg-incubator-designs-pictures

If you still want to put your foot down and buy one, I would recommend any with a fan or forced air incubators they're much more effective.


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## wendykn1 (Jul 19, 2010)

I made my incubator and have 5 eggs in it . Also made a brooder but i am having a hard time getting the humidity passed 40%. What else can i do. Have 2 bottles of water but not doing any good. The eggs should be hatching any day now.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Try raising the humidity of the entire room. A manufactured humidifier would probably be helpful. Water containers with a wider mouth than the bottles will expose more water surface to the air for evaporation. Hanging up some wet towels would also help put moisture in the air. You could even use a spray bottle to spray mist into the air, but the effect would probably be a lot more short-lived than the other options.


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## wendykn1 (Jul 19, 2010)

I have 2 mason jar with the centre of the lid off and a wet sponge in the other one. Could it be the bulb not hot enough?


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

I don't have any experience with incubators so I can't really tell you what the problem is. If you're successfully maintaining the recommended temperature then you certainly don't want to make it any hotter than that. Since it's a homemade brooder it's possible that there's a leak somewhere that is letting the humidity escape, or that the humidity system simply isn't providing enough evaporation to to get the job done. But I figured that if you can raise the humidity in the room to the right level, it might help the incubator do a better job of maintaining the humidity. It's worth a try anyway, or you could apply some of the same principles inside of the incubator instead of doing it with the whole room. Use water containers with a wider mouth or add a damp washcloth inside the incubator to supplement the mason jars.

Proper humidity is very important, because too much or too little can lead to hatch failure. This link has detailed information on weighing eggs to see if they're losing the proper amount of weight and making adjustments if they aren't: http://www.brinsea.com/customerservice/humidity.html The small size of cockatiel eggs might complicate things a bit; you'd need a scale that weighs in tenths of grams at least, and hundredths of grams might be better.


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## Darkel777 (Jun 7, 2013)

I don't use mason jars and I only use water bottles to steady the temperature. I have the water bottles and my water reservoir under a hardware cloth platform below the eggs. I just tossed the bottles in and filled in water for evaporation at the bottom of the cooler around them. I works better this way I can get humidity up to 90% which is overkill.


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