Egg incubator for poultry farmers

Left: Inner and outer boxes for the incubator. Center: Inside of an early incubator prototype. Key features: polypropylene bags of straw for insulation, three shelves, chain connecting the shelves. Right: Inner box of the incubator with the door open, showing the capacity of the three shelves and the 45° tilt. Photos: Courtesy MIT D-Lab

Designing an efficient and reliable egg incubator for optimal methods of poultry production.

MIT D-Lab class

Introduction to Energy in Global Development (2.651 / EC.711 / EC.791 (G)) - Spring 2025

Country

Cameroon

Community partner

African Diaspora Council of Switzerland Branch Cameroon (CDAS-BC)
● Carole, Founder/President of CDAS-BC and Local Farmer
● Kathrin, Secretary/Treasurer of CDAS-BC and Local Farmer

Team

Lilly Heilshorn - 2025, Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Gracie Goll - 2026, Aerospace Engineering at MIT
Jamel Merritt - 2026, Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Maeve McGinnis - 2027, Chemical Engineering at MIT

Background and problem framing

Our project works with partners from Obala, Cameroon, where agriculture employs 70% of the workforce. We focus specifically on the poultry sector, which makes up 42% of the country’s total meat production and contributes 4% to the national GDP. Poultry farming in Cameroon is largely dominated by small-scale farmers who traditionally import infertile GMO chicks for brooding and resale. In Fall 2024, the DLab Energy team began developing a solution to support farmers in raising local breeds and hatching their chicks through egg incubation. This approach reduces the reliance on imported chicks while also allowing hens to lay eggs more frequently. Building on the foundation laid by the Fall team, our current efforts aim to improve the incubator box’s usability, capacity, and temperature control through experimentation with low-cost egg rotation and heating methods.

Our solution

Our design process centered on two key areas: the incubator’s structural design and its heating system. The structure consists of an inner and outer box, both made from plywood, with polypropylene bags filled with straw packed in between for insulation. Inside, three removable shelves rest on dowel rods and are designed to tilt back and forth up to 45 degrees throughout the day, which is an essential function for successful egg incubation. A chain mechanism connects the shelves, enabling them to tilt simultaneously without opening the inner box. This reduces labor, minimizes heat loss, and improves efficiency compared to manual egg rotation. These improvements address our first design goal: enhanced usability.

Two views of an egg incubator prototype. — Solar cooker used to melt beeswax. Courtesy MIT D-Lab

To address heating, we explored multiple options, each with trade-offs. Our box features a 60W heating lamp, which offers precise temperature control and continuous heating regardless of the time of day. However, this solution depends on a stable electricity supply, which is not always available in rural settings. As an off-grid alternative, we use jars of melted beeswax as a phase change material, functioning as thermal batteries when placed at the bottom of the inner box. Current practices melt the beeswax in boiling water over a fire, which is quite labor-intensive. So, we created a solar cooker prototype that melts the beeswax using solar energy throughout the day. These strategies achieve our third design goal: properly heating the incubator.

Next steps

Next steps for this project include conducting further temperature evaluations that account for seasonal variations in solar radiation in Cameroon, as well as the performance of different insulation materials. There is also room to improve and optimize the solar cooker prototype for efficiency and reliability. Lastly, it will be essential to identify and test locally available materials to ensure the entire design can be successfully built in Cameroon.