Newbie Question

Any help here would be appreciated.....I am pretty new to trying to hatch these things and I just would like to know if I am overlooking something here. From what I have read on here through a lot of posts I thought I was right on track for a good hatch but it just didn't work.

I have a LG still air incubator without a fan or egg turner. I collected eggs for 4 days and stored them in an appropriate room until incubation. I marked the eggs, rotated them twice a day until the last three days of the hatch. Temp showed to stay at 99.5 through the hatch and the humidity stayed 40-45% for the first 18 days. I tried a lot of suggestions that I read in this forum to increase the humidity to 60-65% for the last days but it never got over 55%.

After the 26th day I cracked them all open and half of them just looked like a normal egg. About half looked like they tried to develop a little (I do not know what its supposed to look like but it definitely did not look close to a chick). I am collecting eggs again am going to try this again soon, any thoughts here???

I'm so sorry. I'm guessing the temp wasn't right. It's supposed to be around 101 in the still air. And the gauge on the LG is not accurate so you have to have several more thermometers also to find hot and cold spots throughout the incubator. Good luck next time.

BB34 said:

Any help here would be appreciated.....I am pretty new to trying to hatch these things and I just would like to know if I am overlooking something here. From what I have read on here through a lot of posts I thought I was right on track for a good hatch but it just didn't work.

I have a LG still air incubator without a fan or egg turner. I collected eggs for 4 days and stored them in an appropriate room until incubation. I marked the eggs, rotated them twice a day until the last three days of the hatch. Temp showed to stay at 99.5 through the hatch and the humidity stayed 40-45% for the first 18 days. I tried a lot of suggestions that I read in this forum to increase the humidity to 60-65% for the last days but it never got over 55%.

After the 26th day I cracked them all open and half of them just looked like a normal egg. About half looked like they tried to develop a little (I do not know what its supposed to look like but it definitely did not look close to a chick). I am collecting eggs again am going to try this again soon, any thoughts here???

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Joplus is correct. The digital LG's readouts are notorious for being off sometimes as much as 2 degrees (f) plus. And still air incubators should be ran at 101-102F with the temps taken near the tops of the egg.

No matter what kind of thermometer/hygrometer you use, you should always double check the temps on it to make sure that it is accurate. I use no less than 2 and usually 3 thermometers in my bator to insure correct temps and to catch hot/cold spots in the bator. If you are using one of the digital lgs and you do not have your own thermometer/hygrometer in the bator and are relying on the display, then that's probably why you didn't get over 55% humidity. Many of those humidity gages stay at 40-50% ish whether there is water in it or not. You might have had plenty of humidity. If there was any condensation, then you know you had too much.

I would suggest get your own thermometers and hygrometer and check them for accuracy. Once you know you have accurate temps, you're on the right start.

Have you ever checked a sample of your eggs for fertility to make sure that your % are good there?

Once you have checked fertility and temps I recommend a low humidity incubation method the first 17 days and checking the air cells to know when and how to adjust the humidity for your eggs.

I am going to give you some links, an egg chart and fertility pics, (in case you aren't sure how to check for fertility.) The first link is my overall hatching guide, (from a hands on perspective), the second is my humidity guide. This is the method I use, very successfully for guiding my humidity. I'll also link the candling guide from here on BYC. It's an awesome tool to help you understand what you are looking for when. The Cobb's chart will let you see what the development looks like at what day. Hopefully some of this can help you.

http://hatching411.weebly.com/
http://letsraisechickens.weebly.com...anuals-understanding-and-controlling-humidity
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation

Cobb's chart:


And fertility guide:

Thanks a lot for the responses! I'll make those changes and double check everything next time now that I know

BB34 said:

Thanks a lot for the responses! I'll make those changes and double check everything next time now that I know

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Btw