Brinsea Mini Advance Incubator Review
With spring right around the corner, the hatching season will be in full swing before we know it. For those of us who raise backyard poultry flocks and ornamental fowl, this is an exciting and often busy time of the year. Our birds begin their yearly courtship and soon thereafter dutiful hens begin laying eggs throughout the spring and, depending on breed, even into the summer months. For many of us, this means that our egg incubators will soon be full of various hatching eggs. As such, I thought it would be appropriate time to review the Mini Advance, one of the latest small personal incubators available from Brinsea – the leading manufacturer of incubators, brooders, and other avian products. For seasoned fowl breeders and poultry hobbyists alike, the name Brinsea has become synonymous with quality and advanced hatching technology. And like all Brinsea products, the Mini Advance lives up to this well-deserved reputation. For the purpose of this review, I will be setting seven bantam duck eggs in a brand-new Mini Advance incubator acquired directly from Brinsea.com. Fortunately for this reviewer, the Brinsea Mini Advance arrives pre-assembled from the factory and is ready-to-go right out of the box.
Upon initial inspection of the Brinsea Mini Advance, the first thing one notices is the incubator’s quality construction. The incubator’s see-through dome top, which provides superior egg viewing during incubation and hatch, is made of quality acrylic; while the base and egg turning tray are made of a durable high-gloss plastic. The digital display housing, which sits atop the see-through dome, is likewise constructed of quality plastic. In terms of durability, these materials offer a major advantage over cheaper styrofoam incubators such as the Little Giant incubator by Miller Manufacturing and the Hova-Bator by GQF. Moreover, the use of high-grade plastic provides a better hatching environment and makes post-hatch cleanup easier in contrast to styrofoam incubators, which can often harbor bacteria. In its overall appearance and design, the Mini Advance is somewhat reminiscent of the well-known Marsh Turn-X incubator by Lyon Electric. However, the Brinsea Mini Advance is more modern in appearance and features Brinsea’s signature yellow and black color scheme. More importantly, the Mini Advance offers similar features as the Marsh Turn-X but at just one-third the cost of that incubator. And unlike the Marsh Turn-X, the Mini Advance features digital programming of the most common incubation settings. In short, the Mini Advance gives the immediate impression of being a well-made and sophisticated little incubator.
At eight inches in diameter, the Mini Advance is the smallest incubator in the Brinsea lineup and hence the “mini” designation. If fact, the Brinsea Mini Advance is one of the smallest incubators currently on the market. Because of its small footprint the Mini Advance can be setup nearly anywhere, making it ideal for those with limited space. The Mini Advance is intended for small clutches of eggs; its default egg turning tray accommodates seven regular size eggs. However, by switching the automatic turning feature off and removing the egg turning tray, the Mini Advance can actually accommodate up to ten standard size chicken eggs. For smaller eggs, such as those of quail and pheasant, an optional 12 egg tray can be purchased separately. Again, for the purpose of this review, I’ll be setting seven fertile hatching eggs from our flock of white call ducks. As a size reference, call duck eggs are only slightly larger than the average bantam chicken egg. And as you can see in the photo below, the call duck eggs fit nicely in the standard egg turning tray.
One of the most unique features of the Mini Advance is the incubator’s digital programming menu, which allows for digital programming of important incubation settings including temperature, incubation period, and egg turning frequency. Such an advanced feature is usually only found in more expensive incubators. Preparing the Mini Advance for egg incubation is made easy by this sophisticated, yet straight forward, digital menu. In fact, I had the Mini Advance up and running within a matter of minutes. With a few quick adjustments to the digital menu, the Mini Advance was ready to incubate my seven call duck eggs. In additional to digital programming the Mini Advance also features fan-assisted air circulation and automatic egg turning, both of which are necessary for optimum incubation conditions. The Mini Advance has two water reservoirs that are used to achieve the correct humidity during incubation. By filling the first reservoir, relative humidity inside the incubator remained around 50 percent. However, by filling the second reservoir, humidity increases to about 65 percent which is the ideal humidity during hatch. Of course, this will vary according the environment in which the incubator is set up. Nonetheless, the incubator’s water reservoirs are easy to access and manual humidity control is relatively easy to maintain in such a small incubator. For those requiring automatic humidity control, Brinsea offers the Mini Advance EX which includes an external water reservoir and digital humidity control.
The Mini Advance arrives factory set to the optimum incubation temperature of 99.5 degrees. Within only a few minutes of setting my call duck eggs in the incubator, the Mini Advance had reached this temperature. More importantly, the Mini Advance has steadily held the temperature between 99.5 to 99.6 degrees throughout the duration of the incubation period with no adjustments made on my part. Should the temperature ever exceed the recommended range for safe egg incubation, the Mini Advance will sound an alarm. This important feature is not usually found in other small tabletop incubators. Using the digital menu, I was able to program the incubator to automatically turn the eggs every hour. A chime sounds each time the eggs are turned; however, the motor that rotates the egg turning tray remains relatively quite when in use. With the exception of refilling the water reservoirs occasionally during incubation, the Mini Advance is truly a set-n-go type incubator that requires very little user oversight during incubation.
In short, the Mini Advance is a quality small incubator that achieves and maintains the correct incubation conditions for hatching a variety of fowl eggs using technology usually only seen in more expensive models. At the time of this blog post, all seven call duck eggs were developing. And by the following week, all seven call ducklings had successfully hatched. In other words, I achieved a 100% hatch rate using the Brinsea Mini Advance for this particular hatch. You can visit my call duck egg incubation page to follow the incubation and hatch of these eggs. For those of us who raise and breed call ducks, it’s well known that call duck eggs are notoriously difficult to incubate and hatch. Nonetheless, the Brinsea Mini Advance did an excellent job of incubating eggs that usually require close supervision and the use of more expensive equipment. By incorporating automatic egg turning, fan-assisted air circulation, and digital programming into the Mini Advance, Brinsea has brought advanced incubation technology to the poultry hobbyist at a very reasonable price. And while the Mini Advance’s easy-to-use features are ideal for the novice, its level of sophistication is equally suited to the more discerning fowl breeder who regularly needs to incubate a small number of difficult-to-hatch eggs.
Brinsea’s mini incubators are available in three versions: the Mini Eco, the Mini Advance, and the Mini Advance EX. The Mini Eco is the entry level model, whereas the Mini Advance EX represents the most feature-rich model with automatic humidity control. The Mini Advance is the mid-line model combing both low cost and advanced incubation technology. In addition to the Mini Advance, Brinsea also manufactures the popular HatchMaker and Octagon series incubators. To purchase any incubator manufactured by Brinsea including the Mini Advance or to learn more about Brinsea’s quality incubators, simply visit the Brinsea web site. If you’ve used the Brinsea Mini Advance with success and would like to share your experience with others, please feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, please check out our blog regularly for future product reviews and articles of interest to the avian breeder and poultry hobbyist.
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Brinsea Mini Advance Incubator: Watch Your Eggs Hatch, Every Time!
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May 1st, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Your ducklings are precious!
I am incubating chickens; I am a first timer in all things fowl. I am using the same incubator, and am looking for a concrete answer for when to fill both my pots with water. All I have read is “hatching time.” Did you interpret that to mean 2 days before hatch, the day of hatch, or when?
Thanks for your reply.
May 1st, 2010 at 11:17 AM
Thanks for the comment. In regard to your question, your relative humidity needs to be about 45% during incubation (i.e. fill one reservoir) for chicken eggs. Then, two days before hatch, you would increase the humidity by filling the second reservoir with water. Keep in mind that its not really the amount of water that matters, but the surface area of water. Also keep in mind that the humidity would need to be a bit higher if you were incubating duck eggs. I hope that answers your question.
Thanks,
Scott
September 23rd, 2010 at 7:16 PM
Brinsea incubators are over-priced and unnecessarily complicated. Y’all should check out R-Com incubators instead. Very easy to operate and even easier to clean. I use them for my call ducks and chickens and have better hatches than I ever did with my Brinsea units.
Mike
September 24th, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Mike,
If you compare incubator prices, I think that you will find that Brinsea is quite competitive. In fact, for the quality you get with a Brinsea, Brinsea incubators are very affordable. For instance, the Brinsea Mini is very comparable in quality and features to the Marsh Turn-X incubators by Lyon Technologies, yet the Turn-X costs about 4 times that of the Brinsea Mini. Nor are Brinsea incubators any more complicated that any other incubator. Truth be told, the Brinsea Mini Advance is about the easiest incubator I’ve ever used to hatch eggs. You mentioned R-Com incubators. The R-Com Suro and the Brinsea Octagon 20 are very similar in design with both having similar ease-of-use. And once again, the Brinsea is more affordable than the R-Com Suro incubator. Are you sure you’ve actually owned a Brinsea incubator?
Scott
November 7th, 2010 at 2:36 PM
When you turn the incubator from automatic turning to egg turning “on” and you set it for every hour, does that make a difference from automatic turning? if so, what is it because I have just purchased this incubator and I want to hatch Khaki Campbell duck eggs in it this spring.
November 8th, 2010 at 3:01 AM
Liana,
I’m going on memory, but I believe you would accomplish the same results. If I’m not mistaken, auto-turning defaults the incubator to turn the eggs automatically every hour, whereas turning it to “on” gives the user the option to have the eggs turn at any interval (i.e. every half hour, every hour, or every two hours, etc). I could have that backwards though. I suggest referring to the Brinsea user manual that came with your incubator or do a bit of experimenting before setting your eggs. Let me know what you find out and good luck!
Scott
December 30th, 2010 at 10:56 PM
I have recently purchased the Brinsea mini advanced and am attempting to hatch some pekin duck eggs. The problem I face though is that the larger eggs are not turning and while the smaller chicken eggs turn with no problem I have to manually reach in and turn the larger pekin eggs by hand, which is a real hassle. so for chicken eggs i recommend it but for anything bigger I will not be using this model again.
December 31st, 2010 at 2:55 AM
Matthieu,
Thanks for sharing your experience. If I’m not mistaken, the user manual for the Mini Advance recommends using eggs within a certain weight range. Its possible that Pekin duck eggs are outside of that weight range. The Mini Advance is ideally intended for standard size chicken eggs or smaller. I have used the Mini Advance with success to hatch pheasant eggs and bantam duck eggs, but I don’t have any first-hand experience with standard-size duck eggs. You might want to reference the incubator’s user manual for egg weight recommendations.
Thanks,
Scott
April 9th, 2011 at 10:04 AM
I have just purchase the mini advance for Serama eggs. I don’t know how to choose the turning angle or turning time frame. Since the eggs are small, I thought to use the angle 4 and the turning time frame to 180 minutes? Am I right or does someone have more info before I set the eggs? Thank you.
April 10th, 2011 at 4:58 AM
Pam,
It might take some experimentation to find out what works best for your specific needs. I’ve never incubated Serema eggs, so I don’t want to give you any advise on hatching angle. However, I would stick with the default turning time. It’s always worked for me regardless of what kind of eggs I’m hatching. Thanks for posting and good luck with your hatch!
Scott
September 4th, 2011 at 9:58 PM
l have just purchased this incubator – l’m confused! the eggs just go around inside the incubator when it turns. Are they supposed to actually roll over or just go around inside the incubator?
September 5th, 2011 at 5:02 AM
Hi Geraldine,
The eggs are supposed to turn within the incubator and also roll on their sides as they are turned. Let me know if you need any help.
Good Luck,
Scott
October 5th, 2011 at 1:45 PM
Hello, Great review. I just sold my Little Giant(thank goodness) And Im going to purchase a Brinsea Mini, either Advance or EX. My question is, do you think its worth buying te EX? Please email me back, thank you, Michele
October 5th, 2011 at 2:47 PM
Hi Michelle,
Thanks for visiting the site! I think you will be pleased with either model. I personally have the Mini Advance and love it. So, I can’t really comment on the Mini Advance EX. It does offer the advantage of automatic humidity control which must be a nice feature.
Scott
October 5th, 2011 at 2:10 PM
Hello, once again. On the Advance how can you tell what the humidity level is? Did you put something inside dome? Thank you again
October 5th, 2012 at 2:11 PM
Hello Again,
I use one of those hydrometers intended for measuring reptile habitats and terrariums. It actually works pretty well. Brinsea also makes a digital thermometer with a probe that might work well. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Scott
October 8th, 2011 at 7:51 PM
We recently purchased a Brinsea Mini Advance with the separate peristaltic pump for hatching 5 fertile Major Mitchell Cockatoo eggs. Temperature control and automatic egg turning are great but we are having some problems in maintaining humidity in the 45 to 55% range.
The system is setup on a desk in an un-airconditioned room with the pump reservoir base at the same level as the base of the incubator. After allowing 24 hours for everything to stabilize, the humidity reading on the inbuilt meter is typically around 75 to 80%. Room temperature is 20 deg Celcius with relative humidity of 40%. Running the unit ‘dry’ results in less than 30% on the inbuilt humidity meter.
I suspect that the high humidity with the pump connected may be due to the simplistic pump design where too much water may be siphoning to the water wick (the water cup is slightly lower than the pump reservoir), coupled with the relatively large surface area of the recommended wick card.
In our case best control results from removing the wick card entirely and relying on the surface area of the water in one cup as recommended for the pumpless model. This makes the humidity meter settle to about 60%. We are keen to optimize hatching conditions, because, if we are lucky enough to get 3 of the 5 eggs to hatch – the total value of the 3 chicks would be about $1000 on the local market.
April 8th, 2012 at 8:31 PM
I have green cheek conure eggs in the incubator. What should be the incubation and hatching humidity level. The eggs are sitting in there alive for last 20 days but they are not hatching on the time it suppose to. Should i be worried if they are alive but they are not hatching. Is it too much humidity in there. I have a reptile temp/humidity control gage inside and it says the right temp but the humid is 38% compare to room temp 10%. Eggs are doing fine but they are not hatching. Should I just leave them till they hatch or will they die. I cracked open to see whats happening because it passed its due date and guess what the yolk wasnt sucked in yet. The bird was fully grown and was alive when i opened.
August 12th, 2012 at 4:23 PM
DO NOT OPEN THE EGG! temp can effect the hatch time. I have been happy to find a full clutch hatch a week late. One chick was culled due to complications but if I had attempted to remove him from the egg I would have broken blood vessels and he would have died. If anything the humidity is too low. I believe it should be around 50% then up after he begins to hatch. You can tell if you candle by watching the air in the egg. If anyone else thinks they should help the bird please don’t. The chances are you will do more harm