Incubator, check.
Thermometer, check.
Eggs, check.
Instructions that I'd read somewhere suggested that when turning eggs by hand, you should start out drawing an X on one side of every egg. This brought us down to 28. Still a good number!
The manual turning of the eggs 3 times a day lasted for maybe a week until I sprung for an automatic egg turner, so I could stop worrying about accidentally killing them through my lack of expertise. It was an excellent investment.
The eggs went in to the incubator on January 23rd. They aspired to be kept at about 100 degrees F, and most of the time they got it. Quail eggs only take 17-18 days to hatch, which is better than a chicken egg's 21 days, but it seemed like forever at the time. Every day we were asked, "How are the eggs doing?" "Any hatching yet?" It was really fun.
So there they sat, incubating for over 2 weeks in the dead of winter, biding their time in a silent sauna.
