Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Needing to expand to a larger nice incubator

Anyone have experience in them.
Where to buy one from?
What manufacture to go with?
Benefits of that model?

Thank you.

I don't know how big you are wanting but I just use the chicken hubivators bought at a farm store, like Feldmans. They are easy to use and from my experience have worked great. They are like 40-50 dollars.

jason

Looking for one that can handel 5-10 clutches

How did it work for you?
Did it keep the temp ok?

Depending on how big your clutches are will depend on how many clutches you can fit in the hubivators that I am talking about. If your cluthces are 6 eggs or less you can probably do 4 clutches per hubivator. If you have more than 6 eggs in a clutch you will need a bigger container to hold the eggs in and will fill more space in the hubivator. The hubivators I am using are only about 2 foot by 2 foot and probably 10-12 inches tall. Not real big but I don't have alot of animals to hatch out either!

They keep the temps real good, no problems there.
I hatched out 2 albinos out of a clutch of 5 last year. (het x het)

Jason

I modified my hovabator with a jumbo shipping styro. You can find them at about any pet store that sells a lot of fish. These are the large rectangle boxes. The larges clutches I incubated in it were 2 clutches of burm eggs that numbered around 60 eggs total........100% hatch. The bottom of a factory model is useless for incubating reptiles......and get the thermal flow model, not the fan forced.

Brandon Osborne

1 apartment size refrigerator stripped of all cooling components
go with a thermostat of your choice to best suit your needs preferably one with a heavy duty 6 outlet cord for multiple heating elements to EVENLY distribute the heat around the fridge and to not make your thermostat work so hard
a 4-6 ft heat probe set in the middle
4 80mm computer fans 2 blowing up 2 blowing down to circulate warm air for temperature consistancy (very important)
reptile source has heat wire id go with the longer length wires
you want heat wire on all 3 sides plus bottom and top
some refrigerators actually have a divider dividing the freezer from the fridge which is removable, excellent if you have a single clutch of something u might want specifically male like super pastels being the dominant gene. or take it out and make 1 big incubatori would feed all wiring from the back as usually there are already holes in the back after all wiring is placed plug holes with insulating foam
and make sure the doors magnet closes tightly and flush to the refrigerator if not you may need to replace the gasket around

Are you implying that Ball pythons are temperature sex dependent like many crocadilians, turtles, etc. ? More inf please? thanks

I am only implying what my vet has told me. she said ball pythons incubated at lower temperatures (within incubating criteria) are more likely to be female where as ones incubated at higher tend to be male.now this may very well be true other people have said it,its most common in reptiles, sex determination by temperature. it has been said that ideal temperatures for incubating bp eggs are 88-91 degrees so a person incubating at 89.5 is most likely to have a generally even mix of male and female.i bought the dr.seward video and dan sutherland keeps his incubator at 89.5 and im sure he want an even mix of both m/f,having said that in the wild i am sure that there is no guaranteed range of 88-91 those are just ideal temperatures for what has worked for the sutherlands.my female layed 6 eggs and i allowed her to incubate them herself for about - 1 month my problem was keeping the room a relatively consistent temperature.to high a temperature can kill a clutch of eggs and to low a temperature can kill a clutch of eggs so i was nervous and i bought a little giant incubator and it kept it more controlled all 6 eggs hatched and i have not sexed them yet i will do that when they have some more meat on them so i can accuratly determine if i got more males or females because the room itself was kept very warm and my incubator temps were between 87-92 degrees extreme low and high if you give me ur email ill let you know my m/f ratio outcome

is that you can determine what temperature you want electronically with a good thermostat if you want 89 degrees you get 89 degrees where as hovabators and little giant incubators have a very general thermostat with no guaranteed set degree if the room gets warmer so does the internal air of the incubator and vice versa, you turn the dial to increase or decrese temperature, that can be a pain in the @$$ especially in the south where temps are always fluxuating and i was adjusting that dial every day. the hard work was worth it and payed off, but why let someone else decide what is best for you and your multi-thousand dollar offspring you build it you set the paramters of what u think is best and youuuuu reap the rewards

If you used a proportional thermostat (helix or similar unit) in conjunction with your little giant/hovabator, you wouldn't have to recalibrate it.

TomChambers

true but are you really gonna spend $100 on a $30 incubator to only do 1-2 clutches at a time maybe more but then u need more incubators

Some people do when they are just staring out and they only have a few clutches.

Also as Brandon said above, you can use the top (heating element) of a hovabator and adapt it to a larger bottom. Thus holding several BP clutches.

TomChambers

Temperature dependent sex determination is a neat topic and it's fairly common in the reptile world. I did some reading about this topic for a zoology class. The research I found studied the black rat snake. There was no indication that this species exhibited TDSD, however there was evidence that hatchlings from warmer nest sites (naturally selected) resulted in hatchling that were larger, faster, hatched sooner, and had fewer deformaties.

I don't think the sex of your hatchlings would conclusivly tell us much because the sample size is so small (6) that it could easily skew either way naturally. We would have to incubate a hundred or more eggs at high or low temps to make any conclusions. It would be a neat project though. Good luck with yours, Dave

well ask the forum and see what there replies are so look for it today

But what if I were to go out and buy a manufactured one?
What brand should I look for? Who's making the good ones?

A while back someone posted a couple of sites that sell the large incubators. I checked them out. Pretty pricey but they were very nice. Sorry, didn't bookmark the sites.

Cheryl

www.bigappleherp.com/Reptile_Supplies/Catalog/Incubators_33.html
www.lyonelectric.com/

Someone also posted Habitat Systems at:

http://www.habitatsystemsltd.com/

However I couldn't get to their site today when I tried. I could when the link was first posted so maybe it is just down temporarily, or my computer is messed up.

George Knaack
GLK HERP

I use a 3' x 2' x2' found in the street. Made a cut-out for a hovabator cover. The whole unit hooked up to a ranco thermostat. When not in use for the BP's, it will hold over 9 shoe boxes full of colubrid eggs.

You could also use a UTH taped inside a smaller styrofoam, about 24" x 18" x 18" that will stay at 83- 84 degrees.

Mike