Choosing the Right Incubator

For some of us it takes longer to get things right than others. Finally after 55 years, I think I have the answer for the incubator that works the best and serves my needs. I realize many of the decisions I made as I went along were because of financial constraints or the lack of available materials. I don't like to tell the bad things about something that's not my own product. I prefer to build up the products that I know are good and to let people know when they make a decision to purchase something that is going to be the right one. My garden tiller blog of several years ago promoted a product that I found to be great and now it is time for me to promote a product for those people looking for incubators. This company does not make a lot of super small models but the quality is there and I feel that I can say this is the best choice for me. In 2018 when Linda spent 7 months in the hospital I had some time to search the internet to see what was still available for incubators in the United States. I knew at that time that I was working with a Petersime that had been rebuilt several times and was missing a lot of it's good features, like humidity control, automatic turning etc..  While it served the purpose it wasn't the machine that I knew  it had  been as I had seen them in great condition. The problem is they weren't making them anymore or repair parts. I know my machine was getting close to 100 years old and so it was going to be time to try to do something. I had several people help rebuild setting trays as they had worn out but that was not the only problem. The Cudgly incubators were approaching 75 years old and were well used.  It was also extremely difficult to clean both the setter and the hatcher and things were just wearing out. They both had the original fan motors from 1949. They made things to last back then. At the end of 2018 I had found that there were really no options for someone of my size operation left in this country. All incubators produced were either gargantuan in size or less Than 500 egg capacity. I decided I needed to figure out a way to get these to go until I could no longer function. In 2021 we rebuilt the Petersime again when we moved it to a different building. It was in pretty bad shape basically a giant box with the turning drum in the middle. The hatching trays in the bottom compartment were no longer usable. Meanwhile the  Cudgly started dropping more and more trays because the tray holding racks would break( also non repairable) and drop all 140 eggs in a tray to the bottom of the incubator into a gooey mess and jamming the rest of the trays so I could spend sometimes literally an hour trying to get things situated to keep moving on. Jump to August 2024 when along comes my friend Dennis in Pennsylvania who tells me there's this place called Surehatch  and they sell incubators that are smaller than the Petersime #9 and my Cudgly but I might want to look into them. I was extremely hesitant at first having been taken by numerous incubator places over the years. I wasn't ready to jump in and spend a fortune. First red flag to me was the address for the warehouse was Missouri but the place to call was in Connecticut. Being the doubting person that I am I grilled that poor sales person as to why things were the way they were and to just how good were these incubators and  how did they get to the USA as they are made in South Africa. It wasn't an easy sale for me but I prayed about it for a few days and decided to risk and go to the bank and get a loan and purchase three setting incubators each holding 2,160  chicken eggs and one hatching incubator, just to see how things would work. I was nervous for the next couple months because I asked for them not to be delivered until November 1st when I had a day off as I had to arrange for someone with pallet forks to get them off the truck.  I also had to take apart the Cudgly setter and hatcher. The shipment came  right  on time and my trusty helpers Chase and Jeremy helped me get them uncrated and moved into the incubator building where the old Cudgly incubators had been. I was still nervous, not sure whether I should try something out this Fall or not.  They looked so impressive, high tech and well built. The next day I started one up and I told my one helper to gather every egg he could find. I had switched the birds to maintenance feed back in early September so it had been almost 2 months that they had been on low grade feed which makes  them  molt and stop egg production. I had not even gathered eggs for 2 weeks as I'd been too busy getting the sweet potatoes dug.  He gathered every egg he could find. Some eggs had been set on by the broody breeds and some had been in the dirt. I washed them floated off the bad ones and set the eggs in the new Surehatch incubator. I started out with about 200 eggs knowing some of them were not going to be good and at 10 days candled down to 113. Knowing the results I would get in the Cudgly that time of the year with it not being able to keep up with temperature I was expecting maybe 20 chicks. Setting them on Sunday afternoon as I always do moving them on Friday night to the Hatcher I anticipated by Monday night to find my results which is when I  would start packing chicks to send out for orders. Lo and behold Saturday afternoon I could hear cheeping from the incubator building, a full day earlier than usual. Sunday morning over 70 chicks were out and by Sunday night 81 chicks were out and by Monday morning I ended up with 84. That was an extremely high percentage considering the fact that the eggs were neglected before they were set( not gathered daily, poor adult feed). I was impressed with how the chicks all hatched nearly at the same  time, indicating the evenness of the incubator temperature throughout the entire machine.   I could write a whole other blog on some machines I have used where  from top to bottom the temperature varies so much that  many eggs are ruined. All I can say is these incubators are amazing in the way they control humidity and temperature.  The amount of electricity they use is a fraction of what I used to use with the other ones. The others had to be wired directly into the beaker box because they used so many amps. These I can plug two into one surge protector. I'm going to save a fortune on electricity next year and the efficiency with the way they are turned and temperature control I'm anticipating our hatches to go up 50% or greater.  They are also unbelievably  easy to clean. I was able to quickly clean up a broken egg  with some spray cleaner and a paper towel. I used to have to use a wire brush and scrub and still had a mess.

I can highly recommend this product to anybody who's looking for an incubator they aren't the cheapest thing in the world but you get what you pay for as Linda always tells me. If I could have had all the money I put into less than ideal incubator situations over the last 55 years I could have purchased more of these high quality machines.  Look forward to more updates as we get into next hatching season and we see how they do with duck, goose and turkey eggs. We are planning on tearing down the Petersime  over winter break to make room for more of these I have decided I am  tired of  fighting battles I don’t have to fight.  I encourage anyone looking for incubators to check out the incubators at   https://indivfarmsupply.com