15 2009-11-07T17:06:39-08:00 false So, which did come first? The chicken or the egg? In the absence of the real thing, I'm stuck with playing mum. Not being too well equipped for that task (no feathers for a start!) I've built an incubator that will give the eggs the best chance of starting off on the right foot. It consists of an old frying pan, manual thermostat, soldering iron, 240volt instrument cooling fans, wooden dowel, thin ply offcuts and a large piece of left over builders plywood - cost for these $0. Temperature is critical (Ah, those clever clucky mums) so a "Tempmate thermostat":http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=2592 at $89 delivered to the door, is being used for some serious temperature control. When that has finished its duties here, DS will connect it up to his homebrew setup and aim for the perfect fermented beer, that (sort of) justifies the expense! Some digital temperature sensors from Dallas (left over from another project) are plugged into the computer and read using "Digitemp":http://www.digitemp.com/ then recorded using "RRDtool":http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ to keep a record of the running temperatures within the incubator, and give some peace of mind to this non-mum. (last two photos) One of the benefits to these sensors is that I can upload the resulting graph to the web and monitor its "progress from there":http://members.optusnet.com.au/graybeard/incubator/ - Playing motherhen from afar. The temperature range is narrow - 99 deg F to 102 deg F (37.2 C to 38.9 C). Optimal is at the lower end of 99F - 100F, too hot kills them, too cool just delays their development. The sensors are the black items sticking out from the wooden block mounted on the wall, on the bottom right side of the main photo; the silver item in the same block is the Tempmate's sensor. Finally an el'cheapo humidity gauge which is reading close enough to be usable - $9. I thought the humidity was going to be the easy bit, but it's not easy getting the required range - 50% - 55%, again, _those clever chooks_ To paraphrase a particular meme. * Incubator - cost $100 * Eggs - cost $45 * Successfully hatched chicks - $Priceless. Have I said I'm hopeful? %(bluebellblue)Photos% # The eggs sitting in the manually operated egg turner # The soulless incubator awaits the life forms. # 12 hourly temperatures - "Real time logging here":http://members.optusnet.com.au/graybeard/incubator/ # 24 hourly temperatures - see above link for RT logging 7 false 4 70613 false false false Entry 2009-11-07T05:00:00-08:00 DMY 86541 Public 2009-11-10T03:13:37-08:00 5165 27 C