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Let’s pick up where we left off. You’ve got the thermostat/lamp kit wiring done, the incubator floor done, and a barrier made for your lightbulb. You tested it to see if it worked.
On to the fan! The fan helps to circulate air and keep the temps in your incubator consistent. I bought a fairly large one from Fry’s. Make sure you get one that has only one black wire and one red wire hooked up to the fan.
I had a small one leftover from an old computer, but it didn't work very well
And don’t forget your AC/DC adaptor. Like I mentioned in the prior post, I took mine off of an old scanner I had that no longer worked. You probably have one lying around – if not you can buy one for a few bucks.
The wires out of here are both black, one has gray bars on it.
Cut and strip both the wires for the adaptor and the wires for the fan. I wired the red wire to the gray-barred one and the black wire to the black one – but it was the opposite on the prior fan I had. Plug it in. If it doesn’t work, wire it the other way. Secure the wires with electrical tape.
When you tape it up, tape them individually, and then together so they don't touch.
I mounted my fan onto the incubator wall with mounting tape. The best place to put it is blowing right over the lightbulb, so it can catch that warmed air and distribute it.
Mount your hygrometer somewhere where you can read it. You’ll get a temperature and humidity reading from this.
Put down some kitchen shelf lining, paper towels, whatever on the bottom so that when the chicks hatch, their feet won’t slip through the hardware cloth. Using a steak knife or scissors, put 6-8 vent holes in the side for fresh air. Eggs need to breathe too!
You’re done! You now have a functional incubator. You can lay your eggs on the bottom, and turn them 3x/day by hand. Mark one side with an X and one with an O so you can make sure you turn them all.
However, here are a couple things to make your life easier.
OPTIONAL:
I found it helpful to know the internal temperature of the eggs. You can buy a water wiggler (one of those rubbery toys – think balloon – that is filled with liquid and keeps slipping out of your hands) or you can makeshift something yourself. I filled a ziploc bag with water and put it inside a plastic cup.
I put a food thermometer inside this, carefully so as not to puncture the bag. If you find a water wiggler, you can slip the thermometer in the center part. It’s helpful to have two different reads on the temperature.
Upping the humidity – on day 12, you need to up the humidity to around 60%. This is fairly difficult to do (at least I found so). What worked for me was to have yet another plastic cup, and to put a sponge in it. The sponge should stick out slightly higher than the rim of the cup. I put this opposite my fan so that the sponge would keep sucking up water and the fan would keep evaporating it. I don’t put this in until day 12.
Here’s the placement of the thermostat, bulb, fan, makeshift water wiggler, and humidity upper.
Tah-dah!
Turning all those eggs by hand 3x/day can be tedious and time-consuming. I hate things that take up too much of my time! So I built a contraption that will turn all the eggs at once, without having to open up the incubator.
Eggs need only be turned from side to side.
I bought some quail egg cartons and used those to hold the eggs in place. I attached this to the PVC piping. Eggs need to go pointy-end down into the carton.
Don't permanently glue the two outside pieces, the turner comes out on day 14.
Here’s what my set-up looks like from the top-down. Keep the water well in the bottom filled for consistent humidity.
This was during the last hatch - there's the hygrometer at the top!
In case you got this far and are wondering, “What do I do with the two wine corks?” they are for plugging the holes left by the egg turner on day 12 =)
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE: Run your incubator for a day or two before you expect your eggs. This way you can check your temperatures and humidity and tweak things until everything is consistent. If you start tweaking things after your eggs arrive, you may inadvertently cause a few to expire (polite way of saying DO THIS OR YOU MIGHT KILL THEM!). I had a hatch of 18 out of 40 – no doubt because of my beginning tweaking.
INITIAL INVESTMENT: 2-3 hours. We built ours in an evening after work.
DAILY TIME INVESTMENT: 5-10 minutes. Eggs should be turned 3x a day, ideally every 8 hours. Water in the bottom must be refilled once every few days.
INCUBATING CRASH COURSE:
Eggs take 16-18 days to hatch, at a temp of 99.5-102 degrees F. Humidity should be kept consistent in the 40′s%. Eggs should be turned 3x/day. Stop turning eggs on day 12, and up the humidity to 60%. Keep humidity below 80% or chicks may drown in their eggs. Chicks can be left in incubator for up to two days – on the last days avoid opening the incubator as much as possible. Opening the incubator will cause a loss in humidity and may stop hatching chicks from being able to get out of their eggs (membrane dries out).
A commercially bought incubator will run at least $100 (unless you’re buying a dinky 2-3 egg one that doesn’t work very well…). I’m always looking for ways to save money, and I thought it might be fun, so I decided to build my own.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
-foam ice chest (get a large one or you won’t be able to fit many eggs in it, got mine at Big Lots for $6)
-38-40 watt bulb
-bottle lamp kit (you can get this at the hardware store)
-1/2″ hardware cloth
-PC fan (I bought a rather large one, if you have one lying around, use it!)
-Hot water thermostat (starting temp 90 degrees F)
-Hygrometer (cheapest at WalMart, this measures humidity and temp)
-Small pane of glass or plexiglass (you can take this from an old picture frame, dollar store is a good source)
-Duct tape
-Tray/tupperware/whatever for water
-Adaptor/transformer 120v input 12v DC output (I had one lying around from an old scanner)
-Electrical tape
-2 wine corks
OPTIONAL (for measuring temp inside the eggs):
-Another thermometer
-Water wiggler (one of those liquid-filled toys that slips out of your hands)
OR
-sandwich bag and plastic cup
Cut a rectangle in the lid of the styrofoam chest. Put the pane of glass or plexiglass here and duct tape it down. This is so you can see inside your incubator.
Mine's kind of ugly, you can always used colored duct tape.
Put your tray for water on the bottom of the chest (put it near where your lightbulb will be, but not directly under so you can still access it). Cut the hardware cloth and shape it as a floor for the bottom.
If you put the tupperware/tray in first, it will give you a form to work around.
Now the hard part – wiring the lamp to the thermostat. Here’s the way it works: you set a temperature on the thermostat. When it gets too hot, the bulb turns off. When it gets too cold, the bulb turns back on again. If you do it right, your incubator should keep a fairly steady temperature. For quail eggs, you want to keep it between 99.5 and 102 degrees F, with 99.5 being perfect. You’ll need to tweak it before putting your eggs in, so allow time for this.
This is as good a diagram as I could do
Put the little nut over the wires, then make a hole in the side of your incubator and pull the wires through before working on the wiring. You don’t want to finish your wiring and have to take it apart again!
This is important - I had to do mine over again!
The real thing, you have to take the lamp kit all apart
Keep in mind your bottle lamp kit may be different than mine, with the screw colors reversed. If it doesn’t work one way, you’ve wired it wrong. I bought mine at Lowe’s.
You have to pull the cardboard part out to get to the screws.
All put back together.
Your thermostat screws will have a 1 and a 2 on them, labeling them. I’ve outlined mine in red. Once I finished wiring these, I put electrical tape over them, to avoid any future accidental shocks.
I find it easiest to curl the wire, put it around the screw, then screw it in tight.
Now secure this to the side, and plug it in to make sure it works. The lighbulb should turn on. Didn’t work? Make sure you have the switch on the lightbulb on. Still didn’t work? You did something wrong with the wiring. Re-check it.
Mount the thermostat to the wall of your incubator. I used mounting tape with pieces of styrofoam to raise it off of the wall. The thermostat senses the temperature through the back, so you don’t want that flush with the wall or it won’t sense the air temperature correctly.
Set the thermostat temperature. You’ll have to guesstimate at first, and tweak it over a period of hours.
I made a little cage out of hardware cloth for the lightbulb, so no chicks would hazard the chance of burning themselves on it.
You can see the layout of the thermostat and the fan here.
And I felt the light would be too bright, and spread too much heat on the eggs right next to it, so I made a short cardboard shield. If you do this, don’t make it too high – the fan still needs to distribute the air properly to keep air temps consistent.
Just a little shield...
Up for tomorrow – wiring the fan, checking internal egg temperature, upping the humidity, and building your own (manual) egg turner.
Initial time investment and daily time investment to be included in Part II.
Today we cleaned out the incubator and opened the eggs that didn’t hatch. They passed away for one reason or another, though I didn’t look close enough or open any up to look. But I did think it was neat to see them in their different stages of development.
The aftermath:
WARNING: If you don’t want to see photos of partially developed quail embryos, don’t click to see the rest.
Buying bread can get expensive, especially if you have a taste for those whole wheat loaves. There are bread machines, but those cost a pretty penny as well, and most of then make those square loaves – not so great for sandwiches. A few months ago, we decided to try making our own.
Here’s how you make a loaf of bread in 5-10 minutes of your active time.
Ingredients:
3 cups warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 tablespoon salt
6 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
You can use white flour as well, but we’ve found that whole wheat flour makes for richer-tasting bread. Yeast is cheapest in bulk from a place like Costco. Buying it from the grocery store is $$$. We buy our flour in bulk as well ($0.40/pound).
All of our ingredients - pretty simple!
Put the warm water in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast and the salt. No need to stir. Add the flour on top of this, then stir until all the water is absorbed.
We like to use a loaf pan, but you can shape a round or oval loaf if you’d like. I found the loaf pan at IKEA for $2. I like the loaf pan from IKEA because it’s long and skinny like the bread you buy from the store. That way the kid doesn’t get teased at school for having “weird” bread (kids are strange, aren’t they?).
Our glorious loaf pan!
Oil the pan, and then drop the dough into it.
Oiling the pan is very important, don't forget
Cover it with a cloth and let it rise for 40 minutes (when I’m feeling lazy, I just let it rise in the oven).
I has RISEN
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Uncover the bread, pop it into the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Bread after baking
Voila! You’ve made bread, and you could do something else in the meanwhile.
NOM NOM NOM...all gone
INITIAL INVESTMENT TIME: However long it takes you to get a loaf pan and go to the grocery store =)
DAILY TIME INVESTMENT: For a family of three, a full loaf lasts us just under a week. It takes 5-10 minutes of your active time, takes 1 hr and 15-20 minutes total to be finished.
Oh my goodness, these things are adorable! As of now, 12 are in the brooder, 4 hatched in the incubator, and there are two making their way out of the eggs.
Falling asleep
Big brown eyes wide open!
Napping in the food dish
Quail pile
I’ll let you know how many we get in total!
This is what I woke up to this morning:
Whoa! Lotsa little peepers!
There were 11 when I first checked, I think there are more now.
My cat keeps frantically trying to get into the guest bedroom (where I am incubating). Bad, bad, bad cat.
Hatching Day!
So I’m doing this a little bit backwards, given the day I started this blog. I started posting instructions for the incubator, but then realized that this would be easier for everyone if I took the thing apart and showed you how to put it together from scratch. Once the chicks are all in the brooder, I’ll go ahead and do that.
Today is day 16 of incubation, and the first chick hatched!
Lookit the egg! Real neat escape.
It’s bigger than I thought it would be, given the size of the eggs. And I am so relieved to know I didn’t accidentally kill them all while fumbling through this whole homemade incubation thing. So if you wanted proof beforehand that the homemade incubator works, here it is.
It peeps sooo loudly I can hear it in my office!
Expect more updates on the chickies!
Also, up next is homemade bread – how to make a great-tasting loaf in 5-10 minutes of your active time.
