Looking for thoughts or recommendations for egg incubators. I have an incubator from Tractor Supply. The brand is Farm Innovators and I incubated two sets of chicken eggs successfully. After the second set though, the digital display flaked out and now will not work properly. I believe I paid around $120-$130 for the incubator. The price seems to be going up on all incubators these days, but I was hoping to replace mine with one for about the same general price and hopefully one that would be more durable.

If the heating in the incubator still works and you just cant read it anymore, you could get a portable temperature/humidity monitor and put it in the incubator. Can get one at a hardware store for about $10. Just a thought.

You can build one for the same price and have much higher quality parts. I built one 20 years ago and we've hatched countless numbers of birds in it. It's a wood box with a lid and it uses a 100w bulb for a heat source. I used a Ranco temperature controller but there are many like Inkbird that will function for less.

You won't have any failing parts if you build it yourself and keep it simple. Plus you'll have a nice piece to pass on later.

If that's not an option, then I'd look on Facebook marketplace for a commercial unit. The crap TSC sells is Chinese junk for hobby farmers that want to hatch some birds until their kids get bored and throw it in the trash. You don't want that. You want some long lasting quality stuff

I have an Incuview from Incubator Warehouse.

https://incubatorwarehouse.com/pages/tabletop

Used it twice, and so far it's been great. 90% hatch rate both times. Will use it again this coming spring, some of my layers are getting older and egg production has gone down. It's fantastic to watch them hatch, kids really enjoyed being able to see it.

How do you control turning the eggs? And also humidity?

LimpinM said:

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How do you control turning the eggs? And also humidity?

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LimpinM said:

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How do you control turning the eggs? And also humidity?

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I have an egg turner tray. I don't know what it holds, 25…50….cant recall. But you can scale your system up and just toss two turners in it if you want more.

Humidity is controlled via Inkbird. If it gets too dry, it turns on a water atomizer, when it gets in range, it turns it off.

Don't get me wrong, it's not sleek and slim like a commercial one but you can make it do what you want and control the component quality.


It's big enough that when we pull them off the turner before hatch, there is room for eggs and hatchlings. You can divide off a section and keep all the hatched chicks there and all the eggs on the other to do their thing.


For me, the temperature controller is important. I think this one costs over $100 alone. But everything else is just a box and less than crucial things. If my humidity control stops working, or the turner stops turning, everything is still going to be fine but if my temp controller troller flips out and goes to 130 degrees, or stops working completely and lets the temp go down, that's bad.

We keep the incubator on a table by our door so we are always eyeballing it when we leave or come in or are just about.