GB465895A - Improvement in apparatus for incubating eggs and hatching chicks therefrom - Google Patents

Abstract

465,895. Hatching-appliances; automatic control systems. PETERSIME, I. M., and PETERSIME, R. M. Nov. 19, 1935, No. 32060. Convention date, Oct. 14. [Class 5 (ii)] [Also in Groups XI, XX, and XXXV] The egg trays 40, Fig. 8, are mounted in guides in a drum carried by a perforated tube 33 open at one end to the atmosphere and adapted to be turned by a handle 30a for tilting the trays. Fans 43 connected by spiders 42 rotatable on the tube 33 are driven by an electric motor 46 and circulate air radially from the tube through the trays. The trays 56 in a hatching compartment are also carried in a drum mounted on a perforated tube and provided with a circulating fan. After the incubation period, the egg trays 40 are inverted on larger hatching trays 56 that are placed in the hatching compartment and are covered with a wirework cover to protect the chicks. Air is passed out of the incubator by adjustable slides having perforations adapted to register with perforations in a wall of the incubator. The incubator is heated by thermostatically-controlled electric resistances 4, 4a, Fig. 7, arranged in the floor of the incubator in the rearing and hatching compartments, or the resistances may be arranged in the roof. The humidity of the air is regulated by the rotation of discs 28 dipping into water troughs 26. The discs are mounted on shafts 27 driven by electric motors 29 that are controlled by humidistats. Each humidistat comprises a perforated tube 5 containing a rod of bass or chestnut wood with the grain at right-angles to its length. One end of the rod is mounted adjustably in the tube 5, while the other end is connected to a plunger projecting through the other end of the tube and adapted, when a predetermined degree of humidity is indicated, to break the circuit to the electric motor driving the discs 28.