Homemade incubator

A few people asked what i was using to incubate my eggs in. I was using multiple hovabators and homemade ice cooler incubators. After seeing someone else's incubator i decided it was time to stop messing around with this bull s**t and get set up right.

*** Normal Melamine wood (what i made my stackable cages from.)

*** Ran off a Helix DBS-1000. With the probe the helix control the inside temperature.

*** Heated from house hold lights. 60 watt at the bottom and 40 watt at the top. The lights get brighter as it needs to warm up, and the light dims out when it reaches close to temp. and if it gets to hot the helix shut the lights completely off.

*** Trap door on bottom back of incubator in case the shelf is full and need to change a bulb. Bandanna's were used to block direct light to the eggs. I haven't installed what i have to block direct light.

*** On wheels so its easy to move.

Dimensions

3 feet from left to right.

4 feet high.

18 inches deep.

The wood above and below the light should have some kind of heat shield so the wood doesnt have direct exposer to the light at that close of a range.

Do believe when you open those doors you lose you heat and humidity fast. BUT it seems to come back fairly fast.

I have a big tub of water on the bottom shelf and it holds a good 80% humidity in the incubator.(experimenting) BUT i dont need the tub of water because the little tubs i have the eggs in, has 3/4 inch of water at the bottom. Then I fill the rest of the way with soil. The lid is sealed shut with two holes in the plastic bin. one in the lid for the probe and one on the side for some ventilation. You can see the condensation build up on the inside of the bin. Plenty of moisture. I am not 100% sure but i should be able to hold 1000 Eggs give or take!!

So i layed out the dimensions and my Dad has to take the credit for building it. But he has way more time on his hands than i do. Must be nice to be retired. And i Believe it took him a week and a half, on and off of course. (very well done, you dont have to be as neat as him.) The cost was somewhere around three to four hundred bucks. I will get some more detailed pics of the glass and the trim.

Hope this helps anyone thinking of making a incubator. any questions please just ask!

More pics on the inside

Heres some pics on the lighting

Nice incubator, and thanks for posting it (even though it took a tad of poking and prodding to pull you away from your video game lmao).

I have one question though. What was your reasoning for choosing the use of lights instead of heat tape? Do you find the lighting to be more efficient and/or easily controlled? I would worry that lights would possibly cause evaporation of the humidity faster than heat tape would, though I could be wrong.

spyder79 said:

Nice incubator, and thanks for posting it (even though it took a tad of poking and prodding to pull you away from your video game lmao).

I have one question though. What was your reasoning for choosing the use of lights instead of heat tape? Do you find the lighting to be more efficient and/or easily controlled? I would worry that lights would possibly cause evaporation of the humidity faster than heat tape would, though I could be wrong.

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Good question. i seen bulbs used before and the little bit of extra light can prevent mold.
And would i use tape or heat paneling? Just tape would work i guess?

spyder79 said:

Nice incubator, and thanks for posting it (even though it took a tad of poking and prodding to pull you away from your video game lmao).

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In the navy and didnt play any kind of war/ first person shooter game?

Your superior is probly disappointed in you. J/K

dragonluver83 said:

Good question. i seen bulbs used before and the little bit of extra light can prevent mold.
And would i use tape or heat paneling? Just tape would work i guess?

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I have typically seen the 11" wide flex watt heat tape used but I would venture to guess heat paneling would do the same thing. Good observation on the mold issue never really thought of that one with the use of light.

dragonluver83 said:

In the navy and didnt play any kind of war/ first person shooter game?

Your superior is probly disappointed in you. J/K

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I had 8 months straight of a first person shooter "game" so I am just not much on the simulated war games lol.

spyder79 said:

Good observation on the mold issue never really thought of that one with the use of light.

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Thanks, i know a thing or two.

How do you like the soil in the egg bins? It looks like it would hold moisture well, but I've always worried about it causing mold.

Dillon

Heat is heat as far as incubation goes. One heat source wouldn't be more prone to evaporating moisture than another in closed containers like that.
I use flexwatt myself.

There's nothing wrong with using lights, there's a few reasons I don't use them personally.
I use on/off thermostats on my incubator and I just don't want the eggs being in light-dark-light-dark every few minutes.
Lights are a little less efficient as a heat source since part of the power is spent generating the light, whereas non light emitting heaters use pretty much all the power to generate the heat.
Lastly, just in my mind i see it as the females in the wild bury their eggs, or otherwise conceal them in other species so I'm not entirely sure light is a good thing during incubation. I have no reason really to believe it's detrimental though, just the way I think about things. I incubate in total darkness except when the door is opened to check the eggs.

As for the mold, you can prepare any media in such a way as to limit the potential of mold, but there's a few things like peat or sphagnum moss that naturally inhibit it. I don't think I've ever used peat moss to incubate, but I have used long fibered sphagnum, especially in large containers incubating large eggs with excellent results.

Very nice looking incubator by the way.

Good job Thomas you are the Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very nice Tom!

Neat stuff!
The reason I use 3'heat tape instead of light bulbs, is the light bulb can burn out, for even a short period. I use a coolers for now, 3'heat tape, thermostat,egg create, deli-cup per-lite..blah blah....and I run my humidity a lil higher too.....


either way as long as it works

Thank you guys for the compliments.

Clay,

I think you could use different containers to block out the light.. I.E. not clear plastic. But i got the idea from another breeder that has lights as a heat source. And light has no way affected the babies or there hatching. ( I felt the same way as you until i seen it in action.) But I am sure the panels would work just as good or like your reasoning maybe better. I like it cause i dont EVER have to open the incubator unless putting eggs in or taking them out. I can see in every bin so i know when there hatching.

Chris,

VERY good point, one light can burn out, maybe two, hell lets go for THREE burnt out lights... SO now what, i only have ONE operating light bulb...


This incubator can heat up from room temperature and stay at its desired temperature off of ONE light bulb. AND once its cough up to desired temp the light will run some where around half power. So i am not worried about losing a bulb even though i have about 20 lights on stand by.. There cheap so why not make sure you have enough.

Chris,

BTW
whatcha got hatching over there i see a head poking out of the top

The light doesn't affect the babies at all and even if you lost heat in the incubator for an entire day it wouldn't affect the babies....as long as you aren't living in a house with extreme low temps.

Right on sounds good to me, I,ve seen others run theirs the same way!
Those eggs pics are old but got a couple smoothies and leathers clutchs cooking now few more weeks...
Rizzo & luna to conan and luna to kid rock

dragonluver83 said:

Thank you guys for the compliments.

Clay,

I think you could use different containers to block out the light.. I.E. not clear plastic. But i got the idea from another breeder that has lights as a heat source. And light has no way affected the babies or there hatching. ( I felt the same way as you until i seen it in action.) But I am sure the panels would work just as good or like your reasoning maybe better. I like it cause i dont EVER have to open the incubator unless putting eggs in or taking them out. I can see in every bin so i know when there hatching.

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There's alot of people who use lights to heat the incubator so I'm sure it works. That's all that matters really.
I did see one incubator today on a breeders site, but I just can't remember where. His incubator was heated with lights installed on the floor of the unit. Just above the lights was a false floor with holes drilled in it. Above that were the wire shelves that held the incubation containers.
The false floor allowed the warm air to rise, which I'm sure helps even out the temps through convection, and also limited the amount of light in the incubator, keeping it sort of lighted but dim.
I thought that was a good approach to the issue. Wish I could remember where I saw that, but you can probably get the idea of it.