If you want to keep eggs warm to hatch, you’ll need an incubator. You could buy one off the shelf, but they’re not so complex — just a nicely-controlled warm box you could easily whip up yourself. As it turns out, that’s precisely what [RCLifeOn] did.
The incubator is built out of wooden panels screwed together to make a simple box. The frame of the front door is also wood, but it features 3D printed hinges and handles, because that’s the easiest way to make hardware when you’re a printing wizard like [RCLifeOn].
The box is fitted with controls for humidity and temperature to ensure the best possible conditions for hatching chicken eggs inside. As you might have guessed, a heated bed from a 3D printer was used to control the temperature inside. As for humidity, a sensor tracks the conditions in the box, and triggers an ultrasonic mister to increase the level as necessary. There’s also a little motion introduced via a moving platform run by a motor and some step-down gearing, which apparently aids in the hatching process.
[RCLifeOn] calls it “a machine that creates life,” and that honestly sounds about fair. We’ve seen similar projects along these lines before, too.
[Thanks to Chris Muncy for the tip!]
Nice tuning in to HaD and seeing hot chicks!
I’m not sure novice backyard chicken ranches are a good idea, and i see articles trending all over Google feed news. Bird flu is easily spread thru wild birds; it’s hard enough for market farmers to keep their chickens healthy. And it’s troubling to know living animals are getting caught up in an effort to save a little money at the supermarket. I’m hoping people will consider all the responsibilities they’re taking on. There is a true science to raising healthy animals for food production. There’s also a chunky expense to it. I dunno about promoting this idea.
I don’t know much about chickens or eggs but I was once involved in a discussion about whether or not you could incubate eggs in a water bath as opposed to air. The idea being that it would be easier to maintain the temperature of some volume of water.
From what I’ve looked at, this would probably not work as the eggs need to “breathe” by some amount – that there is some oxygen that passes through the shell.
In any case, it would be a real disaster if the eggs were to hatch while submerged.
Bird or reptile eggs suffocate in water. Amphibian eggs dry up without water.
I don’t think submerging eggs in water is a good idea.
That being said, why not silicon heating pads?
Not to cover all the eggs, but like an half of the surface (like 4 strips evenly spaced)?
But if you want uncanny, go for shell less egg incubation.
I saw a time-lapse of one hatching this way once. Unsettling.
But the chick was okay (if wondering why it didn’t had to break it’s shell).
I find an other one, I find it way less “careful” and more “let’s do science!”, but it shows some incredible views https://youtu.be/xOLy6J1Sorg
I can see it now: FSM is sitting back in the giant pasta bowl in the sky thinking “but I can make DIY chickens!”
Very nice! I did the same thing for quails a few years ago, with roadside particle board, a 10€
print bed as the heating element and PC fans… It looked like shit, but 23 quails out of 30 eggs in total were healthy. Now I want quails again lol
Only about half of the eggs will be able to make eggs, the other half make noise. The world needs egg sexing instead of halving to cull the roosters. This is Planet Chicken at 10 to 20 billion alive at any one time.
Large producers use automated MRI scans, about 3000/minute.
https://www.wattagnet.com/poultry-future/poultry-tech-summit-news/article/15744525/mri-may-help-egg-producers-with-inoxo-sexing-phenotyping
Even though it is fun and cool to see people who normally would not get chickens or farm animals I’ll be the negative person here. And it is not even about the animals, it is about over complicating everything. This should be nothing more than a heated PID controlled environment and the rest should be done manually IMHO. The automatic rotation of the eggs is a horrible idea and the amount of just garbage that he did that is involved is beyond stupid. I enjoy his channel but this build was horrible. He did nothing new except introduce new ways to make sure your eggs fail at hatching.
Again I am all for people having chickens and other animals it teaches a lot.
Would you care to elaborate on why the auto turners are a bad idea? They’re pretty standard afaik and it beats having to remember to turn them imo
Auto turners done correctly do work well. Home DIY ones like this tend to kill lots of chicks when they are trying to hatch. Baby chicks are tough little suckers but can also be killed by the most fragile of things too sadly :(
Meanwhile we did this in the ’90s with… an incandescent light bulb.. and prevented overheating via ventilation holes providing passive cooling..
They did this in the 1890s with… nothing.
And the 1790s…
And the 1790s BC…
And
hahah i love the hack of this…10-15 years ago we were hacking together 3d printers and we might have looked all over for a suitable heater to hack into the bed. but now we’re looking for a general heater and the first one that comes to hand is made for a 3d printer.
What’s old is new again. Did this in the 90’s with a broken refrigerator (good insulation, lots of space), a halogen bulb for heat, a small fan, and a thermostat. The humidity management on this is nice, doing it humidity with dry and wet bulbs and uncovered ice cube trays took a while to get it dialed in (how much exposed water surface, how close to the fan).