Christopher Trapence, a Zambian entrepreneur dedicated to supporting local farmers, designed an egg incubator using recycled materials. He has since trained over 100 farmers to create their own incubators, designed 10 incubators, and built a brooder to provide warmth for newly hatched chicks. Watch and learn how to do it yourself.
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00:00My name is Christopher Trapez, a development economist and innovator from Malawi.
00:08I make incubators from recycled materials.
00:11Being a development economist and also having skills in electronics has made me build this
00:17incubator in a perfect way.
00:19So in this video I'll be showing you how everything works.
00:27This is one of the incubators that I make.
00:29This one is a mid-sized incubator and it has several parts.
00:33The first part that is available here is the temperature control unit.
00:38It controls the heat inside the incubator and sometimes it also controls the turning
00:44of the eggs.
00:46Inside the incubator we have trays where we put the eggs and these are the trays.
00:54Another part that is important for the incubator is the humidity control, the grating section,
01:01which is where we put the containers that contain the water.
01:25Every incubator that we make has a fan for dissipating the heat.
01:30We also have bulbs which produce the heat.
01:34The other thing is the wires which are used for transmitting the signals and also electricity
01:40throughout the incubators.
01:46These incubators are made from recycled materials.
01:50When we use the recycled materials we reduce the cost of making the incubator since we
01:56source the components from all the electronic equipment, like old TVs or old radios and
02:03all other electronic gadgets.
02:05So we extract the components then we build the control circuits.
02:21The main cause for the project to start was to help the farmers in my community since
02:26most of the farmers lack enough capital to have expensive technology for their production.
02:34So after time, farmers from other communities started to reach us after seeing the impact
02:40that it had.
02:45The third egg incubator costs 60,000 kwacha, which is $60.
02:53And the bigger size incubator is 600 eggs, which costs $200.
03:05Chicken eggs, when they are put in the incubator, they take 21 days just as the normal chickens.
03:10So the hatchlings are usually in the range of 70% to 90%.
03:16And after they hatch, we transfer them into a brooder, which takes the responsibility
03:23of the mother chicken, because the chicks are usually not good at regulating the temperature
03:30on their own.
03:31So this brooder is automatic.
03:32So they set the right temperature for the chicks.
03:35And after a few weeks, then we transfer them, we put them outside for them to go on their
03:42own.
03:43So the process repeats again and again.