Planned power outage during incubation.

[DunK]

Hey folks.

Just been informed we will be having an electric pole changed on the farm on Wednesday so the power could be off for a maximum of 8 hours. The eggs will be on their 5th day in the incubator. So my question is do i move them to the in-laws and then back again and risk them getting jiggled about or do i just improvise with a hot water bottle or the likes and loads of towels covered over it and hope for less than 8 hours outage.

Cheers in advance

DunK

 

[Marigold]

Oh dear, that's a tricky one, what bad luck. How far away are your inlaws and how long would it take to drive to them? I don't know what others will suggest, but if they're fairly near I would go for the option of moving the eggs and inci. Keeping the temperature steady for several hours in an outage would be tricky, especially as the weather's not very warm at the moment up north anyway, and loss of power would also mean ventilation would be knocked out, especially if the incubator was swaddled with insulation. If you're careful there's no reason why the eggs should be unduly disturbed by a journey. Some modern incubators actually build in regular 15- minute times when power is off, to simulate the hen leaving the nest to feed, so probably a break of up to 30 minutes for travel might be OK? Or you could perhaps put the eggs in an egg box in an insulated bag with a hot water bottle or heat pad? It would save you worrying about them all day, once you'd got them there and set up the inci again, and you could do it beforehand, when convenient, and when you don't have to be at work. And you wouldn't have to rush back to sort things out the moment the power is back on either.

 

[rick]

Mains inverters are pretty cheap and available these days. Typically plug into a 12V car lighter socket and give 100W of power at 240VAC. If your incubator was drawing 40w continuous then that would be about like having your car headlamps on so may need a second battery over 8 hours. Not sure about that though - if it's on a thermostat then it won't be continuous and so less power.
Try Halford or I've also seen them at the supermarket.

Bit of an overestimate. It would be about the same as 1 headlight or all your sidelights at 40W.

 

[DunK]

Cheers folks.

I moved the incubator across to the inlaws. Its just 10 mins in the car. Will pop over later tonight to bring it back. We'll see how things pan out.

DunK

 

[Marigold]

That sounds the simplest solution, will keep the eggs turning, ventilated and at the right temperature and humidity. Do let us know how the hatch turns out, good luck.

 

[DunK]

Just candled the eggs on day 7. First time candeling but sure 7 out of the 8 are growing a fetus not too sure of the 8th one but the egg has a whiteness to the outside so might be stopping me seeing clearly. Some of the eggs have their air sac more to the side than on the top so will have to monitor that. Not sure it makes a big difference or not.

 

[gazeds]

Hi Dunk, same situation here, elec off for six hours, all the eggs hatched ok, all I did when the power was off, I placed a couple of towels over the incubator.

 

[chrismahon]

The air sac position seems to make little difference in my experience DunK- they hatch even with it at the 'sharp' end. The most important thing is that it is large enough to give space for the chick to bring its head out from under its wing to pip, otherwise you get 'dead-in-shell'.

The power supplies in areas of France, particularly the Dordogne, are a joke, so anyone moving there be warned! The service was so unreliable we had three major power outages ( and more minor ones) over the 21 day incubation, one of which was two days. We had both a 300W inverter and also smooth supply generators (Honda EU2.0), both of which were used. When we went shopping we always switched over to the inverter as a precaution. We bought a mains failure alarm which was put in the bedroom. It emits a high pitched whistle to wake you up if the power goes out at night, which it did several times. We actually had a rebate on the standing charge for the electricity bill, because we had been without so often.