Incubator Reviews: Nurture Right 360
Nurture Right 360 is a fine incubator at about $150.
What it gets right:
The display panel is perfect. I can read it from across the room and I don’t have to squint or turn a light on.
The newer ones have more visibility through the lid, which I do appreciate as it makes it easy to watch the chicks hatch.
I can add water without lifting the lid, which seems like a no-brainer but not all incubators offer this.
The part I should not get wet is in the lid, separate from the part the hatchlings dirty which I have to clean after the hatch.
New Nurture Right 360 on the left, older New Nurture Right 360 on the right.
What it gets wrong:
Nurture Right 360 Pinch Points
Again, no handles. Lifting the lid is a two-hand operation but of course we need a hand free to do whatever it was we lifted it for. This leaves us palming the lid in one hand and dropping it on the eggs, cracking and killing them.
The lid-to-base connection is unreliable. It’s easy to think we have the lid on properly when we don’t.
Really difficult to clean water scale and feather dust out of the grooves with swollen arthritic fingers. So many pinch points. Again, product designers should all give things to their grannies to get input.
If the hatchlings hatch over a period of time and you practice the 12-hour swoop method, be cautioned: the lid sits directly on the base, which means that
any lifting of the lid blasts cooler dryer air onto your eggs,
the lid may or may not settle back into its grooves properly,
the lack of the handle makes it so that you either need a helper or you risk holding the lid with one hand (precarious at best) and grabbing chicks with the other.
WORK-AROUND for all three of these problems: unscrew the motor mount from the top at lock-down so you can lift that part and grab your chicks.
If a hatchling ends up pipping partially and then gets knocked about, it can end up pressed against the curve of the outer edge which too closely matches its own curve, sealing the chick off from air. This happened to us twice.
Summary
If I couldn’t have Brinseas, I would have Nurture Right 360s, though I would continue to hatch in my HovaBator. It’s a great choice for beginners as it is affordable and reliable.
