IT HAS BEGUN!

In prepping for our annual Chickam webcast, I run the incubator and associated equipment for at least a week. This year was no different, and everything had been purring along beautifully...

...until three days before I was due to set the eggs in the incubator.

 

That's when my trusty, 8 year old ReptiPro incubator suddenly stopped heating.

Despite opening it up for a good cleaning (and finding nothing appeared amiss), it refused to be resurrected. Well and truly borked. And the ReptiPro company no longer exists, haha.

 

Okay, I find one over at Vevor for a reasonable price that looks identical to my old ReptiPro, and get it ordered. But this means it will also be subject to a week-long test run, so our original Chickam start date & hatch date are out the window. 

 

Luckily it performs well, despite a few kinda big issues, cool chicken-disco blue light aside.

 

See that black thing on the top? That's a madly spinning, UNCOVERED fan. As you stand in front of the incubator it is below your eye level...and easy to forget it's there. Perfect for taking the hide off the back of your hand when you reach in there, haha.

I know this, because...

Yeah.

 

The exposed cord running from it down to the built-in fan is...odd, and no doubt will get pecked by curious chicks. Also, the two racks we always used in the ReptiPro to hold eggs are impossible, because (as revealed in the manual, no less!) there is a FIVE DEGREE TEMPERATURE SPLIT  BETWEEN THE TWO RACKS.

I tested it, and sure enough, one rack ran at 99.5, the other at 104.5 

Chicken eggs require a constant incubation temperature of 100.5, haha.

 

We must use the space between the upper and lower racks. This means we can only run ONE rack of 12-15 eggs, depending on their size.

But by far the worst thing is, there's no cord notch in the frame that the ReptiPro had--I cannot use my trusty water weasel/temperature probe combination to mimic an egg and give me a dead-on temperature reading inside an egg. And I don't have time to cut a cord notch in the brand-new incubator (for extra fun, the manual says there IS a notch. It lies).

*sigh*

 

Okay, run with what ya got. So here it is, today we started 15 eggs from our flock! In an effort to get eggs from certain hens, the kid and I spent two solid days sitting out in the coop, Johnny-on-the-spot catching the girls laying eggs...with so-so success. That's why you'll see names written on eggs--the ones with a question mark means we are only 90% certain of mama.

 

I'll candle them in 10 days to see how many embryos we have and remove any duds. Hatch day *should* be Saturday, May 31st - Sunday, June 1st.

 

When the first egg pips, we'll start our YouTube webcast here:

www.youtube.com/@jackshenhouse