A Low-Cost Egg Incubator to Provide Zambian Churches with Income and Food Security

Partnering with Brethren in Christ (BIC) Church in Zambia, the Egg Incubator Team is seeking to help provide a source of income for the growing churches in Choma, Zambia. They will accomplish this by designing and building a high-quality, low-cost egg incubator fabricated from local parts and cheap internationally available parts for The Nahumba Mission, in Choma, Zambia. The team’s design will provide the means for the Mission to hatch and sell chickens to provide both food security and a sustainable supplemental income. With the specifications to maintain temperature, humidity and constant ventilation, the team selected heating and humidity concepts for their incubator series. The team completed both mechanical and electrical designs for the setter and hatcher. In preparation for testing the incubator design with fertilized eggs, the team has also produced an incubation and hatching plan and achieved IACUC approval. Currently, the team is in the prototyping phase, while simultaneously monitoring the temperature and humidity in an existing incubator setter design. Once the team finishes their hatcher prototype and verifies that the temperature and humidity specifications are met, they will be ready to test designs using fertilized chicken eggs.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1020/thumbnail.jp