Tuesday 28 February 2012

Incubator Issues

Last night I did a quick candle of the eggs in my incubator.  It looks like most of the Polish and Polish X Frizzle eggs are growing.  Some of the others, the shells are too dark for me to see through very well, yet.  Mind you it's only day four.

Since I have put the eggs in, I have been having trouble with humidity.  I just can't seem to keep it up.  The Brinsea Octagon 40 has four slots in the bottom, and you are supposed to fill two of them up with water and keep topping them up until lock down.  I had the vent closed 2/3rd of the way.  And still the humidity would not go up.  It was staying at 25 - 30%.  I tried closing the vent all the way.  No Change.  I also noticed that the temperature went down one degree to 99.5 (was about 100.5).

So last night I did my candle, and topped up all four of the water slots with very warm water.  Put the lid back on and crossed my fingers.  After a few hours, before I went to bed, I checked my incubator and noticed that the temperature varied.  I have 3 different thermometers in my incubator.  I thought this was because I had the lid off and it was still catching up in temperature.  The humidity was reading 60% with all 4 slots filled with very warm water and the vent closed all the way.

This morning I got up and checked my incubator. and was surprised to see that the temperature was still reading low, so I turned it up slightly.  One (the Spot Check) has the probe sitting in between the eggs about centre of the egg.  One is sitting on top of the eggs, and the other is stuck on the lid about half way up the lid.  All three thermometers are now giving me entirely different readings.  The lowest (in the eggs) is reading 97.8, the middle one is 98.3 and the highest is 99.0 degrees.  It's been a few hours now, and still no change to the temperature, so I just turned it up a little more.  Also the humidity is back down to 40%.  

Oh, did I mention that the turner is clicking?  I noticed it last fall when I did a test hatch but thought it might be because it was new and working out kinks.  But it is still clicking and worse now.  It clicks ever 5 - 20 seconds.  I've tried to re- adjust the incubator on the turner, WD40ing it.  It sounds the same when the incubator has eggs in it or empty.  I contacted the company and my clicking issue has been sent to the top guys, and I haven't heard back from them.  The clicking is quite loud, so that we can hear it upstairs in our bedroom with the door shut.

I feel rather sick about the whole thing, because I have wanted a good incubator for so long and it was a big deal for me to get this one.  And I really had to talk my husband into it, saying that Brinsea were top notch incubators.  I haven't mentioned to my husband the temperature issue that has risen yet.  He was all for sending it back last year when it arrived without the digital control, and again the other day when we got it going, and it was clicking again.

Ohhhhh what shall I do?  This is only the second time I have used this incubator.  

2 comments:

  1. Jen I have a link for you about the octagon 40s I will email it to you.
    Also I think 35-40% humidity would be just right for incubating,you only want it at 60 for hatching...
    I

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  2. Thanks for that link. It looks like it will be very helpful. I had a quick glance through it and noticed the part about the clicking. Yesterday I took the incubator off of the turner and listened. No clicking. Put weight on with my finger. No clicking. Put the Incubator on. Clicked. I'm thinking it might just be the incubator rubbing on the pin. I thought of vaseline to lubricate it. (I tried WD40, but it didn't work). But I was scared to use Vaseline incase it reacted with the foam of the incubator, but I see that it can be used, so I will give that a try.

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