[goosepimple]

Someone posted me a thread last year on making your own egg hatching incubator which seemed simple enough.  Anyone ever tried this and it worked?

[jaykay]

I haven't. I do have one of these though, in which the heating element has gone. You're welcome to it, if you're going to buy a heating element anyway.........

[Hermit]

Dont know about the tread on here but we made a fantastic one out of a meals on wheels plate warmer. It had all the shelves , thermostats etc. We hatched many a game bird out of it.

[Brijjy]

Dont know about the tread on here but we made a fantastic one out of a meals on wheels plate warmer. It had all the shelves , thermostats etc. We hatched many a game bird out of it.

First, mug the Meals on Wheels lady.....

[daddymatty82]

a mate of mine made a bread box inky . cut a hole and bought the heater element from maplins and built it himself cost him £16 i think £12 for the bread bin from asda and £5 for the heater  and he had an old pc fan that he used aswell  . hatched one lot of quail  and marans and then sold it for £60

[Dogwalker]

I've had great results with one, a cardboard box lined with kingspan, old tv perspex screen as a lid, 40w light bulb to heat and computer fan.  My son did the electric bit for me, a modified kit from maplins. 

[goosepimple]

  Liked all those recipes!  amazing what works!  Kingspan - eco, brilliant.
Thank you for that kind offer Judith, it's actually for the geese so I can provide 'back ups' if necessary after last years failures - they are using the same nesting places - the first has been ransacked (as it was last year) probably by vermin, the second (in a gorse bush) is more successful, they are not yet sitting full time so I can managed to pinch a few eggs (the female ones hopefully ). I will decline however, - it would probably be used more by someone else - I wouldn't use it often enough to warrant having it, it would probably become too much of a temptation and I'd end up with quail, guinea fowl and all sorts, all males of course :-\but thank you.  I've just called friends who have a shooting business and they are happy to lend me theirs providing I can stick some Canada Geese eggs in with them (will have to separate quickly at birth! - I was down your neck of the woods last week and there were lots of them about - very pretty).  Can you believe they usually use bantams to hatch goose eggs!  Nature's best  Many thanks.

[chrismahon]

Seen one made from a polystyrene box and one from an old fridge. Think the temperature controller was a TC120 on the fridge with a heating wire coiled around the insides -quite accurate. Fans are old computer units.

Can buy very cheapy second hand manual egg turning ones. Problem is risk of infection increases considerably with all the handling and opening. Semi-autos are better and we bought a new Spanish unit for £65 and had good results.

[goosepimple]

Yes, I must say I am tempted to try a couple of eggs in a heath robinson type of thing just to see what happens

[Skirza]

We made an incubator out of a polystyrene box from pets at home (they give them away after they've had their fish delivered. We used a couple of 100w bulbs with a thermostat bought off ebay I think. I made an egg turner out of some dowling. It was ok, had around a 60% hatch rate but I found the humidity really hard to control.

[goosepimple]

Well, I've got 8 goose eggs in a 20 year old incubator from friends - it's not turning so I'm doing it manually so we'll see what happens...keep you posted! 

[artscott]

I’m on homemade incubator MKIV.  First was still air, cardboard box, second a cake tin, third was a pick nick cooler and forth is an old cabinet, insulated with fans, heated with propagator heater, and a pivoting egg turner, which is manual but means I only need to open the door to add water.

It’s not that the original MKI,II and III didn’t work, I just like messing about to see if I can improve the design.  Get about 80% success with the present one, although I must admit I do have a good thermostat that I salvaged from a scrap machine at work.

If anyone is interested I can try and take some photos and do a more detailed description.  Although should only be built if you have time as if I calculate up all the time I spend messing with them I probably could have brought a rather expensive, state of the art production model.

[goosepimple]

Thanks A, being an inventor is half the fun of it - afraid I've only gone as far as putting Kingspan insulation strips left over from our building project around the 20year old incubator as it wasn't getting up above 35deg - its helped and we're now at 37.5