PLEASE NOTE: this tutorial is for colder countries where the temperature in your house is no more than 22C.
We hope you find this article helpful and, if you use any of the methods below, please tag us on social media. The result on Wednesday morning at 8am can be seen below - a perfect white and solid block of soya beans tempeh (made with our very own organic split soya beans). Therefore it is important to check for condensation within the first 12 hours and turn off the heater if necessary.Īfter turning off the heater I left the batch to ferment on its own in the kitchen for a further 24 hours. The first 12 hours of the process are crucial as if the heater is left on too long the batch will overheat and spoil. On Tuesday morning at 7am condensation was already appearing on the plastic (see photo below) so I quickly switched off the heater, gave the batch a quick fan before putting the tea towel back on. For this batch I switched on the mat at around 7pm on Monday evening. Please follow the clockwise step by steps using the photo above. There is no need to buy a higher wattage heater. I use the smallest wattage (7W) which gives the best result along with fast fermentation. That’s when we decided to try hatching our own fertile eggs.Sometimes when I fancy making a small batch of tempeh I use this reptile heater (no, I don't have any reptiles in the house). Then spring rolled around again, our neighbors began ordering new chicks from the hatchery and we discovered that the cost of day–old biddies had doubled in our area. Meanwhile, meat prices were rising steadily and we began to consider keeping more chickens for slaughter. By the end of each week during that period, we always had at least a dozen extra for sale or gifts to friends. We clipped their wingtips at that point, constructed a broiler house from miscellaneous scraps of wood and wire and - when they were sufficiently grown - moved our birds to their outdoor quarters.įive months later we discovered our first egg, and gathered the fresh, fertile layings faithfully each day for many months afterward. The day-old chicks were carefully tended, kept warm and protected from drafts by a homemade brooder - a cardboard carton heated with a light bulb - in our empty guestroom for a few weeks.īy the second week the babies’ wings had developed and we discovered them flying around the room and alighting on various objects. Our start with chicken-raising was very cautious: a tiny flock of ten pullets and a cockerel, obtained from a hatchery.
DIY INCUBATOR HOW TO
Luckily they were able to save some of the eggs and were able to incubate them in a set up just like this.įor those not sure where to start, Mother Earth News has an excellent article in the archives on how to hatch your chickens. As a case in point, a friend was recently mowing his field and ran over a wild turkey nest that he did not see.
DIY INCUBATOR PLUS
For people looking to become food independent, breeding chickens are a great way to help along that path. Here is a simple DIY Incubator that anyone can build for under twenty dollars.