The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Womble on April 28, 2014, 07:36:35 am
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Hi Folks,
This is part rant, and part looking for your advice.
We asked my parents for an incubator for Christmas a year ago. My Dad's a gardener with poor hearing, and proudly bought us a propagator instead. Love you Dad! ;D . However, after much research, we purchased an R-Com King Suro incubator (http://www.pandtpoultry.co.uk/product/categoryid/84/productid/1418). £150 for a fully automatic 24 egg incubator with humidity control - perfect, I thought!
Since then, we've had half a dozen awful hatches, one due to the room being too cold I think, two due to the temperature control having drifted off calibration, two for no apparent reason and the last one due to humidity issues I think. Even then, no matter what I did, the temperature did not seem even across the incubator, and I came very close to giving up on it.
The final straw came yesterday. I turned it on for a couple of hours, checked it was holding temperature (not even throughout of course, but ho hum), then put in a dozen goose eggs and went out for the afternoon. I came back to a burning smell, to find the incubator running at 70 degC (I hadn't touched the controls when I put the eggs in), and a load of fried eggs >:( . The high temperature has now completely knackered the electronics, and I currently have it running at 60 degC and climbing, whilst reading 0 degC and 0% humidity. Just out of warranty too - Brilliant!
So, I've had enough! It's cost us far more than its purchase price in failed hatches, and is now going in the dustbin.
So, your recommendations please for a reliable incubator that will:
- Take approx. 24 regular hens eggs
- Also take duck and goose eggs
- Have an auto-turn feature (though if I had to turn goose eggs by hand, I could live with that)
- Be insulated enough to work ok in an old farmhouse with limited heating (For the Rcom to work, apparently the room has to be at 25 degC. Like that's ever going to happen!?).
- Be easy to disinfect.
- Not blow up on me after just over a year!
Automatic humidity is optional - I wouldn't pay extra for it now, since it seems the natural humidity here is about 40%.
Thankyou once again lovely people of TAS! :thumbsup:
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I've had an Rcom like yours for about 3 years and had no trouble with it once I realised you need to run it inside a box of some sort to improve it's rubbish insulation. Brinsea incubators have a very good name and also the company provide very good after sales service.
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Our Suro20 is just as rubbish Womble. I was going to run it in a heated chamber at 25 degrees, but then the cradle motor failed and they are far too expensive to replace.
Simple is reliable I think. We have bought a second semi-auto, a Covatuttu24. Added foam insulation around the outside of the base and got two near perfect hatches. Just pull or push the handle 3 times a day to turn the eggs. There is a mercury thermometer to check the temperature. Humidity is the two water baths which in the UK you wouldn't use until hatching. We paid €170 for it, but had to get it in a hurry. That's the unit all the agricultural merchants sell over here.
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We have Brinsea everything, never had anything else though we still then a hen is better
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Yeah, we bought one of those to start with. It never worked properly. Absolute rubbish. Luckily ours failed quickly so got our money back (after a struggle). I gather that trading standards are now looking into these cheap imported incubators as there have been reports of melted plugs / potential house fires etc.
We now have a couple Brinsea Octagon 20's with the auto cradles and they have been brilliant. Wouldn't use anything else. Their back up is good too.
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we have 2 by Novital and had no problems. and another i think is a brinsea.
we incubated and hatched in a small room where our boiler was kept. it was very warm in there though i never considered room temperature had any effect.
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Womble we have just had a an unsuccesful batch, with our brinsea overheating but in this case It was my fault rather than the incubators, it had been in our sunroom and with all that good weather for a week the incubator got too hot.
I have learnt my lesson and I am moving the incubator to a better room.
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We have a Brinsea octagon 20 advance ex with the turning and the humidity. It is in a draughty farmhouse (although not damp). We have had one fairly successful hatch so far (11 out of 18 postal eggs - a couple were clear and we did get some that failed somewhere along the way) and the values remained rock steady throughout. It now has six W of E geese in due from Thursday so I am keeping my fingers crossed! We have noticed a small amount of condensation in the display although it is still working well. We have also noticed a clicking sound sometimes from the autoturn cradle although this also is still working well (I am still doing the 180 deg. turn manually for the goose eggs). We will see how robust it is as we go along although being plastic we do have to be careful. We have made sure we have registered for the two year guarantee. Another thing we have noticed is the amount of fluff sucked into the fan/heater area once eggs have hatched. The main body can be sterilised ok but this area can't be got at. Ideally we would have one with a separate hatcher but this one was already too expensive so it will just have to do. Being novices we wanted something as reliable as possible to give the chicks the best possible chance and the Brinsea does seem to fit the bill and make up for our lack of experience. However we found it was still crucial to monitor weight loss and adjust the humidity. The Brinsea we have found doesn't fit as many eggs in as we expected. I would say 18 (point down) full size hens eggs or 8 (slightly propped up) goose eggs is the most I would fit in.
Good luck with the next ones!
:fc: :fc: :fc:
Helen
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if your incy is working ok, id still leave it a few days before adding eggs. even the tiniest adjustment can send it to the wrong temp with mine. iv learnt the hard way by almost cooking the eggs too. i use a normal thermometer and a separate humidity gauge.
but yours sounds really dodgy. id be worried with setting the house on fire!
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I would still write to the supplier and manufacturer even out of guarantee - no incubator should overheat to that extent.
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Brinsea Octagon 20 here too - good hatch rate and "living" in our living room (modern house though, but not using central heating). Never any problems with O/heating and yes the cradle clicks as well when it changes direction.
Why would you turn goose eggs manually?
I would also love a separate hatcher, but not doing it on a large enough scale to justify (only two, max 3 hatches per year, mostly chickens, just now doing goose eggs).
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I got a second hand brinsea incubator. Automatic, 42 eggs £100.00... It's been amazing! I hatch up to 100% if using my own eggs, less if I buy eggs at market probably due to transport etc. haven't tried it for geese but worked great on runners last year... I can recommend it enough! I keep it in the garage and just check on it every few days. I'd buy another in a heartbeat. It's called a hatch master or something like that... As it is second hand I didn't get any instructions etc so can't remember what the model name is with certainty.
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Thanks folks,
I've E-mailed the shop I bought it from, so we'll see what they have to say. The temperature controller is completely knackered - the setpoint still says 37.5 degC, but the 'actual' temperature seems to be reading zero, so it's putting the heater full on, all the time.
The irony is i've always had great hatch rates in the past with cheap manual incubators. It was only when we decided to splash out on a posh fully auto one that I started having issues!
if your incy is working ok, id still leave it a few days before adding eggs. even the tiniest adjustment can send it to the wrong temp with mine. iv learnt the hard way by almost cooking the eggs too.
Fair enough - I only let it get to equilibrium for a couple of hours, but even then, it was up to temperature, with the heater clicking on and off before I added the eggs, and I didn't touch the setpoint. We're not talking 'almost cooked' though. Here's one I just cracked open - do you think it would still have been hatchable? ;D
(http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j216/Blutack/TAS2011/rcomkingsuro.jpg)
The other thing I noticed with the Rcom is that it is possible for newly hatched ducklings to stick their bills into the fan. I was watching one hatch (our last sort of successful hatch last week, with 5 emerging out of 24 fertile eggs), and one reached up and wobbled, followed by a horrible grating noise, as his wee bill hit monentarily hit the fan - yes, seriously!!
Why would you turn goose eggs manually?
I wouldn't want to Anke, but I believe with some designs where the eggs are turned by lever, rather than cradle, the auto turn only works for normal sized eggs. I was just saying that this wouldn't be a major issue for us, but would prefer an auto turner at least for hen and duck eggs.
Right, I'm off to research Brinseas et al. Buy cheap, buy twice :( .
Thanks for all your help folks!
Womble.
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We also have the brinsea octagon 20 with cradle. First hatch last year was ok 5/12 but partly our fault messing about with things too much. Hatching 17 maran eggs at the moment, due to hatch Thursday :fc:
We lost the inner basket and brinsea sent us another. There are lots of individual replacement parts on their e-shop and they replied to my email with advice the same day so I'm happy with them :thumbsup:
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Why would you turn goose eggs manually?
The eggs are tipped side to side automatically as normal, but I read that goose eggs benefit from incubating on their sides and turning through 180 degrees end over end (and then back of course the other way so they don't get wound up). I am doing this about three times a day and they seem to be developing nicely. I daren't ignore anything that may help them hatch so will keep doing it until lock down. We'll soon see how successfull this has been.
The Brinsea does take all the worry out of the equation with regard to temperature and humidity. Brinsea did e-mail last week to say that there were a lot of cheap Chinese made incubators on Ebay etc at the moment that were potentially dangerous and could overheat so beware!
Helen
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Wow, the Brinsea product range certainly is confusing! For example, the 'semi auto turning' models don't have a cradle - you have to rock them from side to side on their octagon shaped bits, which sounds distinctly manual to me!
The Octagon 20 range thus appears to be:
1a) Octagon Eco, with automatic temperature control, but a manual glass thermometer for checking it. No auto turn cradle - you just rock the whole thing back and forth on its octagon bits. No humidity measurement. Price roughly £125.
1b) Octagon Eco same as above, but with cradle, roughly £175
2a) Octagon Advance - Auto temp. control plus digital readout, plus control buttons to change the temperature. Humidity display in %. No turning cradle, Roughly £175
2b) Octagon Advance, with cradle, £200 ish.
3) Octagon Advance Ex - as 2a/b, but with water pump. P.O.A. ;D
I do fancy having one with a humidity readout, so it looks as though option 2B could be the one to go for...... Decisions Decisions!
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Another vote for Brinsea. I've got the Octagon 40 advance ex i.e. the most expensive option but I do like the humidity pump. Having said that, I've been mostly (trying to) hatch goose and duck eggs this year and have yet to really use the humidity pump because I've been running it as dry as possible. I've also bought a Octagon 20 eco which was one of their ex-show models and I'm just using for hatching.
Personally I love having the digital read out for the humidity and temperature and that's certainly worth the extra. I also get the cradles but do turn the goose eggs manually once a day as well.
You can buy the humidity pump later if you get the advance model so I would think 2B does sound like your best option. It is the bit I use least. But do phone them up and have a chat - their customer service guys really do seem to know what they're talking about and use the products themselves at home. Every so often they send out an e:mail with a few that they're selling off cheap because they're last year's stock or something. I phoned up quick but not quick enough - they'd all gone within half an hour. However I was really impressed when they phoned me back a couple of weeks later and said they'd just found another one and would I still be interested? Well, yes, I was (hence having my hatcher this year). It's not often you get service like that.
H
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Another vote for the digital readout here. It is easy to set up as you want it. Our Octagon 20 Advance Ex (cradle and humidity pump) was from The Incubator Shop at £259. Delivery took less than a day even with their ordinary postal service.
Helen
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I had an awful manual incubator the last two years-I actually took an axe to it in the end, rather than sell it-impossible to get humidity correct and it was cruel.
Now have a brinsea 20DX. It has a cradle (the whole thing was secondhand) but the mechanism kept getting stuck so I took it off half way through. Then I turned manually, ran it dry until the last 3 days and had a 100% of candled positive eggs hatch my first time. will be doing a bigger hatch starting next week.
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I have a Covina Super 24, automatic turning, fan assisted but manual humidity control, £150. Holds 24 duck/hen eggs and 96 quail eggs! not that I have done quail eggs. Second year and had successful hatchings, can't really comment on percentage as I don't know whether that was down to the eggs set or the inncy, but I've always been happy with it. Hoping that it does it's job with the current batch as it has some eggs from my favourite bantam hen which the fox got last week, so would love to have some of he progeny around the place!
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I have the Brinsea octagon 20 advance ex auto turning and the auto humidity. Its an excellent piece of kit.
I have had 100% hatch rate so far this year, so I am delighted with it. its been on constantly for the last 9 weeks with only a few days break in between, I put a bit of oil on the turning cradle to stop the clicking and I run it dry until day 18, where I then put it up to 60% until hatching then its about 70% during hatch.