How to Make a Bird Incubator

You can hatch chicks with a homemade incubator.

You can hatch poultry eggs at home using an incubator. While a store-bought incubator can cost $150 or more, you can make one yourself quite inexpensively from commonly available materials. The hatching rate from a homemade incubator will likely be less than from a commercial incubator, but if you are raising poultry for domestic consumption or hatching a few eggs for a school science project, a homemade incubator is probably enough to meet your needs at a fraction of the price you would pay at a store.

Things You'll Need

• Styrofoam cooler
• Light socket
• Light bulb (15 or 25 watt)
• Dimmer switch
• Picture frame with glass
• Carpenter glue
• Bowl of water
• Small fan with plastic propeller
• Screwdriver
• Pen
• Scotch tape

Instructions

1. Connect the dimmer switch to the light socket.

2. Trace the outline of the light socket on the lid of the styrofoam cooler and cut a hole on the lid using the outline you just drew. Fix the socket in the hole using carpenter glue to hold it in place. The socket should be facing down with the dimmer switch outside the cooler when the lid is in place. Insert the light bulb into the socket.

3. Cut a rectangle on one side of the cooler, making the rectangle slightly smaller than the picture frame. Use carpenter glue to attach the picture frame in place over the rectangular opening. This will serve as your viewing window.

4. Poke a few holes (about four to start) on each side of the cooler using the screwdriver. These holes are for ventilation.

5. Place the fan in the cooler. The fan is for circulating air in the incubator to help maintain an even temperature.

6. Place the bowl of water in the cooler to maintain humidity.

7. Place the thermometer in the incubator, making sure that the base of the thermometer is at the same height where the eggs would be. Your cooler is now an incubator but needs to be fine-tuned before you're ready to put eggs in it.

8. Turn on the fan, close the lid of the cooler and turn on the light. Monitor the temperature in the cooler through the viewing window every 20 minutes. The temperature needs to hold steady between 99 and 101 degrees Fahrenheit. If it exceeds this range, punch a few more holes into the sides of the cooler to let out some of the warm air; if it is too low, place scotch tape over some of the holes. Also adjust the dimmer switch to have greater control over the temperature range. Continue this process for several hours until the desired temperature holds steady.

9. Place the eggs in the incubator and gently turn them over at least three times daily until they hatch, turning off the fan before you turn them over. Turn on the fan again each time after you turn over the eggs.

Tips & Warnings

• Eggs that you buy at the supermarket are usually not fertile and hence cannot hatch in your incubator. You can buy fertilized hatching eggs online from hatcheries and farms that will ship them to you.

References

• The CyberQuail Guide to Home-Made Incubators
• Mother Earth News: Build Your Own Incubator

Resources

• Buying hatching eggs online
• Fertile chicken eggs