Birth Of A Budget Incubator

[Reptilius]

Greetings everyone, I trust that the weekend was good for all of you.
It was very good for me.
Here is why.

With the current Monetary Exchange rate, 1 South African rand = 12 US Dollars,
it follows therefore that if I am planning to spend 1500 South African Rand on an incubator, it would equate to 18000 US Dollars.
This I am sure everyone will agree is exorbitant.

However to the Patient Opportunist, an Incubator can be built very cheaply indeed.

I have been that Patient Opportunist resulting in my good weekend.

On SATURDAY I loaded my trailer with garden refuse and took it to the local Municipal Dumping Ground,
while there a gentleman, arrived with among other things a two door fridge on his trailer.
In conversation he said that it was too expensive to repair and he was dumping it, my thoughts immediately went into incubator mode,
resulting in the fridge being dumped onto my trailer totally free of charge.

The fridge is in two sections, upper half being a normal refrigerator and the bottom half being a freezer.
Yesterday I cut out the partition between the two halves as a start to building my incubator.

This thread will be a progress report with total cost calculated at the end.





It is not pretty, but it is totally cost free so far.

[Ax01]

With the current Monetary Exchange rate, 1 South African rand = 12 US Dollars,
it follows therefore that if I am planning to spend 1500 South African Rand on an incubator, it would equate to 18000 US Dollars.
This I am sure everyone will agree is exorbitant.

WOW! u can buy like a dozen top of the line, 60inch C-Serpent Hotbox incuabtors for $1500 South African Rands!

anyway YAY i love DIY/Build Threads! good luck! i look forward to seeing your build.

one question - are u only planning to breed BP's? it might have been helpful to keep that fridge/freezer partition if u had planned to breed different species so u can keep 2 diff temps/"climate zones". but too late for that now!

[Reptilius]

Greetings Ax, to purchase a top of the line Incubator capable of holding around 5 clutches of eggs in South Africa would set me back around R5000/6000, South African Rands.

I am fortunate in that where I live, the average summer temps ( when we have Colubrid eggs ) are around 91f to 100f.
I don't even use an incubator for them, I put them in an ice cream tub on some moist vermiculite, check the eggs every weekend, and voila, one of the weekends when you open the tub around the 60 day mark, there are babies.

So this will only be for my BP Projects.
Did I add that I am also new to BP's, since December '17, in fact.

[C.Marie]

I am a girl who loves a deal, sweet find and saving, Olympus Reptiles used chalkboard paint on theirs so they could write what clutches where in theirs it looked awesome as well can not wait to see the transformation 😊

[Ax01]

Did I add that I am also new to BP's, since December '17, in fact.

yes, i totes know u are new! i remember your first threads. i'm glad there's an international community out there.

BTW did u see the JKR vid on visiting a South African BP breeder? very cool!


the breeder in this second vid has more variety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDPmjddX0aI i like how they just find a really handsome African House Snake in the house at the end of the vid. lol is the place crawling w/ them?

anyways good luck and i look forward to your projects.

[Reptilius]

@ Ax: I saw that vid, and will watch the link you gave as soon as I finish here. As for African House Snakes, they are endemic to South Africa, and yes, we do get callouts to peoples houses to catch them.

There are quite a number of African House Snake Morphs out there as well, such as: Normal, Albino, Hypo, Green, Butter, Axantic and I have heard of Leucistic (But not seen a pic yet).

@ C: This is going to take me about 3 months to build as it is finance dependant. I will however be updating as I go along.

I should have it fully operational about 2 months before the first eggs come along, so Temps and Humidity should be well stabilised by then.

[Ax01]

@ Ax: I saw that vid, and will watch the link you gave as soon as I finish here. As for African House Snakes, they are endemic to South Africa, and yes, we do get callouts to peoples houses to catch them.

There are quite a number of African House Snake Morphs out there as well, such as: Normal, Albino, Hypo, Green, Butter, Axantic and I have heard of Leucistic (But not seen a pic yet).

@ C: This is going to take me about 3 months to build as it is finance dependant. I will however be updating as I go along.

I should have it fully operational about 2 months before the first eggs come along, so Temps and Humidity should be well stabilised by then.

ah yes, i have one:

[Reptilius]

Very Very nice indeed. I have been away for 2 weeks on holiday, so in the next few days I will do some more work on the incubator.

[Reptilius]

Well, I finally managed to do a bit more on the Incubator. I put in two heat pads on the back wall.
It may not be the best looking, but all I require is for it to incubate the eggs successfully.