Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Overall I liked this incubator quite well! Would have been 5 stars except it wasn't easy to clean, and the instructions were a little unclear. PROS: good price, held temp well, can see chicks hatch, set it and forget it CONS: hard to clean around electronic bits, only side view, instructions could be better. Successfully hatched 8 of 9 eggs! Temperature Stability: 5 stars Easy of Use: 5 stars Auto Turning: 5 stars Humidity Control: 4 stars Ease of Cleaning: 2 stars Instructions: 3 stars As should be done with ANY incubator, the first thing I did after assembling was to check the accuracy of the readout with a calibrated thermometer. This is also in the incubators instruction manual. If you want a successful hatch in any incubator, this is a very important step! My incubator was off by approximately .6° C, so I simply adjusted the temperature keeping that in mind. I also like to run my incubators a bit warmer than normal so mine was set at 38.2° C. Directions were obviously written by someone who is not a native speaker of English, but were decent enough to understand. Adjusting temperature was very simple. I do wish it went higher than 40° C, but that's just me. I let the incubator run for 4 hours to get it up to temp, and make sure it was holding steady before I added my eggs. I then checked again a couple hours later to make sure the temp was still holding after adding the eggs. It was. The egg tray was easy to assemble and held 9 eggs total. I used 9 chicken eggs from a local breeder. I'd say duck eggs or any larger eggs would only be able to fit 6 in the turning tray. 12 chicken eggs would easily fit in the incubator if the turning tray was not used (hand turning). The egg turner moves EXTREMELY slowly. I had to mark where it was and check back later to see that it was actually moving! The turning rate is pre-set and not adjustable. After adding the eggs and making sure the temperature and turner were working fine, I simply ignored the incubator completely until day 7. I live in an area where I find it best to not add any moisture to my incubator before day 18. If you were in an area that DID need to add moisture, you might need to add a shallow tray or something to the incubator as there is only one large area under the eggs for water. There are no smaller partitions to allow for less humidity gain during days 1-18. The area beneath the egg tray is tall enough to allow for this. On day 7 I candled my eggs to check for air cell growth and embryo growth. I had 100% fertility, though I had to remove one egg that had died early in development. Air cells looked good. The eight good eggs were returned to the incubator. On day 14 I candled again, everything looked good. On day 18 I took the eggs out of the turning tray, added water to the incubator, put in the hatching insert and returned the eggs. I also lowered my temperature to 37.8° C. Since I run my temps high, I had my chicks hatch out a bit early on day 20, all within 24 hours! The plastic mesh had good traction for the chicks to walk on. Because there is no visibility from the top, you really can't see to check for pips during lockdown, but you CAN see them hatch from the side, as the plastic is translucent. I had 8 out of 9 eggs hatch. Pretty good! After the hatch you have to clean your incubator. The bottom half of this incubator was VERY easy to clean, just wash in hot soapy water like you would dishes. The top half was more difficult, and doesn't really seem designed to be cleaned. You have to remove 6 screws and carefully tilt the mesh, without pulling any wires, to clean out the area. (see photo) I didn't feel comfortable unplugging things, so I just did the best I could to clean around it. I was lucky not a lot of fluff flew up into my lid so cleaning wasn't too bad for me this time, but I could see it being a problem in the future. After cleaning and reassembling, I stuck all the cords, trays, manual, etc, into the main body of the incubator and slid it back into the bag it came in. Made for easy storage! Hope this helps some of you and good luck hatching!