Page 1 of 1

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 12:23 pm
by PlumHollow
Hi, starting to think about making our new-to-us wine cooler incubator work better. The wine cooler has slots for racks built in. We wondered about using mini cupcake pans to hold the eggs. We would torch out the bottoms of each cupcake hole for ventilation and weld a metal rod across the middle of each pan for it to rotate on. The ends of the wire rod would fit into the slots of the cooler. If we attach 4 of these together we could tip them all at the same time. Any feedback on that idea?

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:50 pm
by thegawd
yes it will totally work. check out my egg turner and incubator threads for some pics and details of mine... I dont know your dimensions but I use a standard 30 egg tray but you could just cut some to the size of your rack. thats what I did on my first incubator but i screwed trim all around the rack to hold the trays from in. i held the trim onto the rack with little plastic wire clamps. its nice to be able to take a full tray of eggs out fast for candling n what not.

original egg tray design, works perfectly fine on one minute intervals controlled by a digital timer. every 6 hours. it turns the eggs back n forth like 6 times and stops at a slightly different angle. within 24 hours it will finally on the other side.

http://www.poultrytalkontario.net/forum ... f=24&t=109

for my new incubator I have 2 sprockets and a chain. this was ment to gear it way down so it would turn slower and stop on the opposite side within the course of a minute. well I used a different motor that was way slower rpms and the digital timer I used will control seconds. both are available at princess auto as well as all the other parts you could possible need... so this egg turner takes 3 mins n 15 seconds to turn from one side to the other. perfect. its set to run every 6 hours.

http://www.poultrytalkontario.net/forum ... f=24&t=108

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 4:15 pm
by Robbie
PlumHollow wrote:QR_BBPOST Hi, starting to think about making our new-to-us wine cooler incubator work better. The wine cooler has slots for racks built in. We wondered about using mini cupcake pans to hold the eggs. We would torch out the bottoms of each cupcake hole for ventilation and weld a metal rod across the middle of each pan for it to rotate on. The ends of the wire rod would fit into the slots of the cooler. If we attach 4 of these together we could tip them all at the same time. Any feedback on that idea?
It would probably be easier to use a flat tray you could make one out of hardware cloth, and attach some egg trays to it- you could fit in a lot more eggs, and be careful some of those baking trays have teflon finishes (bad from what I understand)
Performance poultry sells the egg trays, they hold 30 eggs each and are made from plastic.

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 4:28 pm
by thegawd
teflon gives off toxic fumes when heated past a certain temp... that nasty smell you smell when a nonstick frying pan gets to hot. its a known carcinogen and deadly to birds. some rough use light bulbs have teflon on them but globe rough use do not. I use em in my brooders and my incubators.

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:29 am
by windwalkingwolf
Sounds promising! I would make sure that chicks that have hatched, cannot get pinched between the pan and the walls of the 'cooler'. You might have trouble finding cupcake pans that you can weld easily, might be easier to go with silicone, or plastic egg flats, and glue.

egg turner for home made incubator

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 2:19 pm
by PlumHollow
Thanks! Have now ordered 4 egg flats from Performance Poultry. Soon as they come in the test hatch will start!