Recently we bought an old metal incubator at a local flea mall. It was in perfect shape except for the heating element. We took the heating element out of our old styrofoam incubator (it has a hole in the bottom) and put it in the metal one. We have had it heating for several days to regulate the temperature and finally got it pretty consistent. Tonight we put in the eggs we have been saving this last week. I am conducting an experiment to see for myself  if some things seem to work better than others.  I labeled the eggs in batches 1-4 so I will know which ones are oldest and newest. I want to see how this affects the percentage of hatches. I will try to keep up with this as they began to hatch. I also overcrowded the incubator…we have 51 eggs. My theory is that not all will be viable, I don’t know which ones are and aren’t… if I don’t put them all in, I may leave out some that are and put in some that aren’t. So…I will candle them as they progress and take out the ones that aren’t. By hatch time, there should be plenty of room. We put in two thermometers and made one a “wet bulb” by taping a piece of cloth to the bulb and sticking it down into the water tray. This will allow it wick up the water and keep the bulb wet. This one will read lower than the dry bulb. With these two numbers we can determine the relative humidity by referring to a relative humidity table. This will allow me to regulate the humidity as well as the temperature. We’ll keep you posted as we go along and also post more detailed information about incubating eggs.