Reptile & Amphibian Forums

this is a 15 year old redtail female. She is a great breeder and has produced eggs every year and even double clutched a couple times. Her name is Brownie.

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Hi, what temp do you incubate your eggs at? Thanks

suck. The temp varies with ambient temp so one group of eggs may get as cold as 85 and as high as 96 but usually these extremes are only short term. I shoot for 89 to 92 ideally.

Is it normal to have some eggs go bad after a month or so? One of my females laid 7 eggs July 20 and thus far 2 have gone bad. The remaining 5 look good still.

it does happen. I have been lucky in the past with almost a 100% hatch rate. This year was terrible though. I lost over half my ater eggs. It could have been that I did not hibernate them last winter.

thats not an arm and a leg but dependable as far as temp,

I have been doing some hunting aroun,d there are some cool ones much more expensive than the hovabators. But also more accuate.
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PHEve / Eve

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Instead of a good incubator, you can hook up a bad one to a good thermostat. I've got a helix brand thermostat hooked up to my hovabator and it works really well. The Helix thermostats are pricey, but the combined price of the hovabator and helix is still way bellow most of the "good incubators" I've seen on the market. I've got the HELIX DBS1000 SYSTEM ( http://helixcontrols.com/default.htm ).

-Alice

is it the thermostat that causes the temp to fluctuate so much? I thought it just might be that they were not insulated enough. The temps here in MI fluctuate so much from day to night. I would help if I had a/c so the room would maintain a constant temp but I don't. Tom

The way the wafer thermostat built into the hovobator works is that when you turn the knob it raises the temperature a set amount. The amount of heat produced is constant so when the room temperature changes so does the temperature of the incubator. Helix themostats are proportional and control how much power is going to the heat source. So, you turn the hovabator all the way up (make sure there are no eggs in it) and plug it into the Helix which is set at your desired temperature. The Helix comes with a probe that measures the temperature so you want to put the probe in an area where it will experience the same temperatures as the eggs. The thermostat will then be constantly adjusting how much power goes to the heating element to keep it at the desired temperature. So, if the room gets hotter, less power goes to the heating element and vice versa.

The Helix thermostat is proportonal as opposed to less expensive on / off thermostats. On / off thermostats such as Ranco actually turn off the heating element when it reaches the set temperature and them turns it back on when it drops a set number of degrees bellow the programmed temperature. You'll get more fluctuation with these types of thermostats and I've also heard that they tend to shorten the life of the heating elements they control.

I did a lot of research on thermostats when I got racks for my leopard geckos and they seem to be one of those things where you get what you pay for. In terms of proportional thermostats, Helix seems to be a favorite and I'm very happy with mine. I've also heard good things about Ranco in terms of reliability. On / offs such as Ranco do, however, click when they turn the heat on and off and I've heard that this click can be rather loud so this may be a concern. Helixes are silent.

If you're having nearly 100% hatch with your eggs as is, there may be no reason to change.

-Alice

When I was roaming around looking at incubators I saw that some of the newer NICER incubators used the helix. I had checked prices here and there and had thought about it for next season.

Thanks Alice for the info and your thoughts on it Helpful
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PHEve / Eve

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