Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm looking at making a incubator, and have a few questions. first I have access to a old chicken incubator I was wondering if I could use that? next how do you incubate eggs. also any good sites on constucting one? It would only need to hold about 50 eggs. and could I use it for turtles eggs too? thanks to all who reply
Wayne

You'll find 2 different school on incubators out there. Mine is the simple and cheap, and there are other very involved and technical ways of doing it. Mine has produced 100% hatch rates, so take that for what it is.
Using WEIGHT as your guide, I put equal parts of vermiculite and water into a rubbermaid container. I put the eggs in, and leave it in a room thats about 75-80 degrees, or pick a warm corner near a light. Open the top every week or so to refresh the air supply. X days later, I get babies to hatch out. I've used this for rat snakes. I wont say it'll work for turtles.

Good luck!
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Wayne, here's what I used last year and had an 85% successful hatch rate with northern ringneck snake eggs.

20 quart rubbermaid container
Perlite
Water bowl
Heat pad
Moss
Ringneck snake eggs

I put an inch of the perlite in the container, and spray it with water. I put moss around the corners and edges of the container and around the waterbowl. I put the waterbowl on the right side of the container and the eggs on the left side. I put the heat pad under the right side, right under the water bowl. I didn't put any holes in the lid, I simply took the lid off once or twice a week to let the container air out. I had a few bad eggs, but other than that, all good!

With turtles I did the same thing, except I buried 3/4 of the eggs in the perlite. That worked too.

Mike
Pic of last year's incubator when I used soil instead of perlite.

Michael's Place

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www.freewebs.com/mikesnake

I've hatched a lot of turtle and snake eggs in chicken incubators (Hovabator brand). As long as the thermostat is functioning, they work fine.
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Chris Harrison