Selfsufficientish.com

Seens a few cheap ones on ebay, aimed at kids and schools.

I will only use it a few times so dont want to spend a lot.

I did see the plans on here for making one but i doubt ill
be able to find the parts here. no electrical shop within 100 miles.


mark.

My electrical bits came from Ebay for the homemade incubator! I already had a soldering iron from my jewellery making- the other bits I begged (the box) or got from B+Q.

kind thoughts
Deb

If you're talking about those brightly coloured dome shaped things, don't bother. They cost quite a lot of money considering how poorly they perform. The heat is provided by a light bulb and so you can't adjust it at all and the bulb invariably blows at the wrong time. The eggs aren't kept in the best conditions so hatch early (because it's too warm) or late (because it isn't warm enough), neither of which are going to produce strong, healthy chicks.
If you only want to hatch small numbers of eggs occasionally, the best and most cost-effective incubator is a broody hen. Buy a pair of bantams and have them hatch your eggs for you. It will mean waiting for one to be broody but you will get a better hatch rate for your money and the chicks will be raised by her too so saving you time as well.

Up until now, we've only bought hens at point of lay. We're considering increasing the number of hens we have as the others are getting older and not laying so well. So we're thinking about eggs to hatch - which is uncharted territory for us. Hence the newbie question. If you have a bantam which has very recently stopped being broody, and you give her a clutch of fertile eggs, is she likely to start feeling broody again? Or do you have to wait patiently for her to become broody again before giving her some eggs to hatch? And is she likely to turn broody again before next spring...? The full size hens we have have never gone broody so this little one is my big hope.

Thanks
Jo

I keep a trio of pekins as broodies, they are easy to encourage. This week I had only a single egg in my incubator which was fertile (the others were dud) and I didn't much see the point of leaving the incubator on for one egg so I thought of the pekins. All I had to do was put a couple of eggs in a nest and within 48 hours two of the girls were sitting. The fertile egg is now under one of them and my incubator has a new batch of eggs in it.
A hen who has just stopped being broody should be given some time to recover condition before sitting again. While they are broody they don't pay much attention to themselves, only coming off the nest for about ten minutes a day to have something to eat, a drink and a poop before sitting again so they are usually pretty drained afterwards. They will not go broody until they are back in tip top shape again. You can get an indication of when they're ready by looking at their wattles and comb. A hen in good condition will have a bright red, waxy looking comb whereas a hen in poor condition's comb will look slightly shrunken and be a much paler pink.
Even when a prospective broody is showing all the signs of being ready, I wouldn't give her the good eggs until she is firmly on the nest. Put some other eggs in a nest to encourage her to sit and wait until she starts objecting to you disturbing her. You'll know broody when you see it, she will fluff up her feathers and make a growling sound when you look in on her. Once you're at that stage, wait for her to get off the nest for food, take away the decoy eggs and replace them with the fertile ones. She will take it from there.

Thanks for the info!

Jo

And don't think all bantams make good broodies! We breed Scots Greys (large fowl) and have a couple of Scots Grey bantams as well.

While the bantams certainly like sitting on a clutch of eggs, their interest wanes after a day or so and they wander off. They'll regain interest two or three days later, and just keep repeating that pattern.

We have two incubators - a Brinsea Octagon 20DX and a Covatutto 24. Both are auto-turn.

The Brinsea is superb and definitely worth the money if you're hatching rare breed eggs. The Covatutto is average, but as it was a gift it's fine!

We get better results with the Brinsea when hatching Scots Grey eggs as you can control the heat and humidity with more accuracy and reliability. (Scots Grays - due to their inbreeding - are very sensitive to even small changes in both heat and humidity.)

However, when hatching more robust and less inbred eggs, then results are about the same from both incubators.

If you have the readies and have rare breed eggs, then the humidity controller for the Brinsea Octagon would be a definite plus. But at £289 or so, I doubt it will every make my shopping list.

Hi Stonehead, great to see you!

Hepsibah wrote:Hi Stonehead, great to see you!

G'day sport!

After lurking for some time I decided I really should join in the discussions here - not least because it gets pretty lonely working our place full-time and the internet is my main connection to the outside world. And what happens, I discover more than a few friendly faces that I know from elsewhere. Brilliant!

Stonehead

We have a Light Sussex bantam thats gone broody three times already this year! As Im not planning to hatch this year Ive been cooling her off but shes so insistant! We also had a Warren hatch a single chick last year,I thought that Hybrids didnt go broody! The chick was a horrid bully of a thing and it was with great relief that we put him in the freezer......

Hi

I've now got my Silkie bantam sitting on a clutch of eggs. She's very happy! My husband has knocked together a little coop from some scrap wood for her. And he is just finishing a little run to go with it. I happened to spot somebody putting half a roll of chicken netting in a skip and rushed over and asked for it. One man's trash is another's treasure! This is so true.

I wonder how many chicks we'll have, if any. This being our first time, I'm excited and nervous all at once. I'm very grateful to have some experienced people here and know I can ask a daft question if I need to.

Thanks! Jo

That's great Jo - congratulations in advance!

Nev

Good luck, fingers crossed for you!

kind thoughts
Deb

When I got home from work tonight, I went out to check up on the hens, as always. Little Mrs Broody Bantam was sitting on a pile of broken eggshells and her head and beak (and her undercarriage) were covered with egg yolk. I know she knows where the food and water are, so it is not that she is hungry. She's never eaten an egg before.
Am I doing something wrong? Is there anything else I should be doing? Do hens just do this sometimes?

There are some eggs left whole still but my hopes for chicks are not as high as they were.....

Jo