by Fahd Khan

SRINAGAR: Gowhar Ahmad Tantray, a 16-year-old boy from the Marhama area of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district has developed a low-cost portable egg incubator to benefit the poultry sector in the area.

Gowhar Ahmad Tantray

Tantray, a class 11th student at Government Higher Secondary School Marhama, was inquisitive since childhood to know why scores of coloured chicks were available in the market. It was this thought that prompted him to research the matter leading him to big industries which hatch eggs on a large scale with large-sized expensive incubators. The research resulted in Tantray building his portable and cheap incubator.

It is pertinent to mention here that an Incubator houses eggs in a warm temperature when a hen starts brooding. The incubators are is usually expensive and large in size but Tantray’s incubator is portable and cost’s just Rs 5000.

The incubator can hatch about 400 eggs at one time. It provides a suitable temperature of 37.5 degrees required for hatching and takes 18 days for the whole process to complete. However, the process can be shortened and even expanded, depending on the need.

“The incubator has a success rate of 90 per cent. We are also planning to make solar and DC-operated egg incubators in the future,” Tantray said, adding that he is filing for a patent for his incubator.

He said that till now, no company has approached them for making the incubators at a large scale but they are still making sure that the product should be available in the market for the convenience of people.

However, Tantray’s journey for building the incubator wasn’t smooth. It was three years ago when he started working on the idea of making a portable egg incubator but failed. He persevered and a year later, he started getting positive results leading to the incubator becoming functional in the current year.

He said that his school became a bedrock for his project when he was demoralised after facing initial failures.

“An egg incubator requires a continuous power supply for nearly 3 weeks to complete the whole process. But considering the electricity curtailment schedules in Kashmir, I faced various problems. I nearly dropped the idea,” Tantray said.

He said that it was his school that came to the rescue by providing him with electricity from their solar power system. “They (school authorities) made sure that the incubator gets an uninterrupted power supply throughout the hatching process.”

Tantray said that he wants his egg incubator to help the local poultry industry to flourish which witnesses challenges during winters.

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