Search for an Egg incubator

My parents are spending their retired life back in Kerala. Its been an year since they have returned to God's own country. For the love of farming and poultry, especially the desi ones, dad decided to grow some hen's , ducks and goose.  

The gooses weren't commonly available, and also a pair of them cost between Rs 3000 - 5000.

Ofcourse, it would not be complete without making a little pond for the ducks and goose to enjoy their swim

And things started getting paid off when these birds start laying eggs. And below is one of the goose egg's pic appended with a morning greetings wishes from dad addressed to his grand kids.

That's when the thought of getting an incubator for my parents came to my mind. This way my parents could experience a full cycle and can keep themselves engaged with these activities.

As usual the search begun by looking for cheap incubator at the amazon store. But most of them listed there were Chinese and the reviews weren't great. That's when i realized that the professional incubators were not listed , and had to do some search on indiatrade and youtube for review inputs.

Finally narrowed down to incubators from Brama, DellMarc , Magnus , Powersol. 

I was looking for one with glass for transparency, bulb for visibility , humidity , temp controllers.

Power-sol fitted the bill and the pics provided by their marketing folks below got me excited. And without any further due , I got this ordered by transferring the required advance payment on Nov 29th Friday. They had committed delivery next business day. However due to shortage of sensors and manpower, the delivery got spilled to the next week.

And finally got this delivered on Dec 4th Wednesday, and here is what we got.  My dad seems to be pretty impressed with its build quality and is excited to get his first batch of home grown poultry. The rest of the payment was transferred through NEFT.

In the evening, got hold of the pics over whatsapp. An quick enough, realized that unit came without a glass on the door. I immediately notified the Powersol team who has promised to get this fixed. 

And the wait continues, spoke to them on Dec 6th. Apparently they are shorthanded , and was told that they will send a person along with the aluminium fabrication unit next week to get the glass installed. Instead, I requested them to rather get this done at their office and replace the door unit itself. 

Finally, today (Dec 10th) Powersol sent their techs to get the glass installed. Now relieved and a happy customer.

Will come back on review of the incubator in future posts

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7 months down,  the humidifier that came with the unit failed. We contacted PowerSol, however was told that this part is not covered under warranty cover. We were able to find replacement on Amazon "

Fedus 12 LED Industrial Incubator Humidifier AC100-240V Ultrasonic Mist Maker Fogger Water Fountain Pond Atomizer

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Finally got our 3rd batch of chicken and duck eggs collected , neatly labelled and placed them in incubator starting Dec 11th.

And here we have our first successfully chicks hatching.

Just when we thought all is well, in the midst of the incubator lockdown and just before our ducklings started hatching, the control panel failed on Jan 5th 2021.

These were the last 4 days for chicken eggs dated 16 Dec 2020 and the final lockdown dates for the duck eggs dated 11 Dec . We were very frustrated and reported this to PowerSol.

After several rounds of communication with PowerSol sales and MD, got through with their technical contact. Over phone support, was able to narrow down the issue to Transformer. 

PowerSol team had couriered the replacement transformer

Since I had soldering tool , I was able to replace this myself with their phone guidance. However mounting this back was the challenge ,since I did not have the required tools to punch it back. However managed to mount it with some screws.

Happy the incubator is back up and functional. I have put the second batch of eggs on Oct 13th 2021. Looking forward to how it comes out.