Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

My local farm supply doesn't stock anything but the really cheap styrofoam incubators. But he can order a hovabator in for me. I've looked on line at current models but just seeing if anybody has suggestions for a complete newbie. I've only incubated once and it was in an ancient borrowed galvanized round thing lol. Still air and fully manual. Hatched 3 out of 9 eggs.
The most I would incubated would be 30 eggs. I've looked around in old threads and Al's custom made incubator (I could only dream of building that!) And honestly just want something easy and reliable that won't break my heart. This will be my first "treat" to myself with money that didn't go up in smoke.

If it is something you want to sort of invest in, I would consider looking at the Brinsea models. They are expensive, but will last, and give you excellent results. I have a sportsman cabinet, and have tried every cheap model under the sun. The money I wasted trying to save could have bought 2 Brinseas.

thanks for the compliments Happy, that one wasnt the first incubator I made. It is the second fully automated poultry incubator, the first one I rebuilt many times until the concept was perfect, it just wasnt big enough. I've also built some reptile incubators years ago. I just learned from experience. I honestly didnt copy anything but was quite suprised how close it was to a high end cabinet incubator. it wasnt all that hard to build, copy it if you want. you could go to the restore and pick up a single cabinet with a drawer and be 3/4 of the way there.

so how many eggs do you want to hatch and how many chicks do you want to keep? how often do you want to hatch? these are questions that will help figure out what you need, then times it by 2 just to be safe. if you want to hatch constantly then you would want a Hatcher as well where you can up the humidity and not affect incubating eggs.

as you prolly guessed I have zero experience with commercial incubators so I cant help ya buy one, but I can help ya build one!

I use hovabators and have great success with them...have to watch the humidity tho-they will run with the humidity in the air and its possible to drown a batch in a humid summer. Now i have a sportsman....but it holds 300+ eggs....

Silkies! They are simply the best! And no hydro increase with a Silkie mom!

Lol ya my little oegbs are good broodiness too. The problem with that is that they want to be mom's for months. The only time I let them hatch I broke their hearts by giving their chicks away before they were done mothering. I'm not doing that to them again. So they can sit on whatever has a good chance of staying.
I have requests for chicks from my cochins. And I just love chicks...Who doesn't!? I have no idea how many I might end up hatching. I don't want to add a lot to my existing coop so I'm scared to hatch too many! The most I would have to set at once would be 30 eggs so I don't need anything big. I looked at the brinsea...Omg they are expensive! My idea was just to hatch enough to pay for the incubator and maybe add a few bucks to the chicken food jar.

I like the Brinsea.... with the auto turner cradle. I had a hard time at first.... you have to learn a few things along the way with them. I started dry hatching, and it worked much better. Another problem with it, was the air circulating. Sometimes as soon as an egg pipped... sometimes at zip.... the air would dry the membrane out, and you will have a shrink wrapped chick. Even tho I had both wells filled for hatch.... as well as sponges in the wells, so it held more water.

I think every persons house is unique. I run them in a cool dark north facing room (stone house), so if its a warm dry summer even, they heat from the day against the cool room makes for more humidity. That is the killer of a hatch I've found. Too much, and you drown. Too little... or air... and you get shrink wrapping. Its a science for sure.

But for sure, you get more eggs hatch, than you lose.... however painful that is... and an octagon 20 will easily hold 24 normal sized chicken eggs. If you leave the bars out, and stagger the eggs, you can get up to 30, depending on size.

I've used hovabators before, got my brinseas and now have a sportsman but haven't hatched in it yet (18 more days!). Getting a hovabator with an egg turner is pretty decent. Not as stable as I'd like, but with a little vigilance, they're not bad at all. I bought the Brinsea Octogon40, fits 56 silkie eggs lol! Set it and forget it. Love them! Hatching is a little harder because they can very easily get too wet or too dry. I find, like Bayvista, putting it in a more stable room, no direct sunlight (filtered light works well) have improved my hatches. Brinsea just released new models too....very similar to a hovabator...which resolves any issues I've had with my autoturning cradle on my brinsea (although, they're very good with replacement parts!).

Totally agree about the stable conditions in the room. Just basic attention to detail and you should be fine. I've used Little Giants up to now and had good results using the dry hatch method but I now have a Sportsman in the room waiting to go.

I'm lazy. We've covered that topic before in depth. Please read this: http://pto.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1599

And if you're a real keener read everything here http://pto.ca/forum/viewforum.php?f=18