Homemade Egg Incubator

We decided we needed an incubator to hatch chickens and turkeys here on the homestead, Our main problem is we our off grid and depend on or small solar array which is 620 watts and a 450 watt wind generator for our power. We store our power in a 675 amp hour battery bank.

There was no way we could use most of the incubators that are sold being they require around 225 watts to operate. I did my research and found a neat little controller that has 40 watt heater, digital controls, fan and being digital its heater reduces power to as low as 10 watts once the incubator is at the preset temperature of 99.5 degrees and best of all its 12 volts!! Perfect for our needs.

I made the incubator out of scrap material i had on hand, i made a semi-automatic egg turner so we don't have to open the box to turn the eggs twice a day. The only thing i had to purchase was the incukit dc controller, it was $49.99.

Yesterday we started it up, it reached its preset temp of 99.5 degrees in 20 minutes, we then loaded it with fresh eggs from our chickens, it held 25 eggs. The egg turner is a simple rack with dowel rods that the eggs sit between,  made a push/pull handle that is pinned for easy removal. All i do is either push or pull the handle to turn the eggs twice a day, real simple and easy. We should have our first batch of chicks in 21 days!!

Some nasty storm clouds, we have had a lot of rain this season, over 14 inches so far, been a record here in the desert.