Humidity in Bator...EXCELLENT INFO HERE! EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS!

OK... SOOO

I have tried my best to clean this thing up. If I missed something, it's probably because the big blocks of text get confusing.

Posts that were just chatting, and posts that were on the edge were subject to removal. Info/responses containing stuff directly related to humidity/hatching were left.

That said.

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My personal take on incubator humidty? Keep temps on the dot, and do humidity trial and error. Season, room, location ALL make a difference. You can read 1 billion posts and books on the subject, dual it out in words with the world, and may never get it "just right." You just need to figure out what works for YOU in your situation.

Like feeding. Ask 10 people, get 15 answers on the absolute only and best way to do it.

6 chicks now and 3 more pipped in my hovabator with the humidity between 76% and 80%. I just read a thread about calibrating the hygrometer and I plan on doing that with mine as soon as this hatch is finished. I'll keep you posted.

Thank you silkiechicken. Great job!

This is alot of good info to read thru. Cgmccary, I agree with alot of what you're saying. I think in my next hatch I will go more by airsac size. And I think I'm going to just keep my humidity at 50% all the way thru. I think there are alot of osmosis factors that we are aware/unaware of.
I think my biggest problem with my hatches is how much the eggs have been tortured in the mail. I also think that some breeds ship better than others. I think some breeds incubate better than others.
I think that I am going to stop messing with nature as much as I can. Temps steady around 100 degrees, and humidity steady at 50%, and let natural osmosis happen, and go by airsac/embryo size.

cgmccary- Great reading there. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Hey guys --

I just found this thread. GREAT info all around!

I want to add one bit of info which I did not notice in the thread, just to complicate the issue further.

As I understand it (please correct me if I'm mistaken here), Wheaties mostly hatches Marans (I know he has other birds as well, but I think most are Marans). Marans, with their dark (heavily coated) eggs, are "known" (conventional wisdom) to respond well to dryer incubation methods than most other breeds that have less egg coating. The reason for this is thought to be that the heavy pigment coating blocks some of the pores that would otherwise allow more humidity exchange out of the egg.

So -- Wheaties has a LOT of hatching experience -- but the main part of his experiences may or may not correspond to what the rest of y'all are incubating, depending on breeds. Just another factor to keep in mind. In fact, I think it would be a great idea if EVERYONE specified what breeds they are hatching when they talk about incubating conditions. Each breed is different!

Myself, I am currently in the middle of my very FIRST hatch. Sportsman 1502, 100 degrees F, 45-47% humidity. I'm currently incubating bantam araucanas and bantam cochins. I intend to raise the humidity to roughly 55-60% for hatching. Wish me luck!

I'm hatching marans, buff orps, ee's, white orps, speckled sussex, bbs orps, silkies, and golden quail.

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Amazon, interesting thought. But I think osmotic-ly (?) the humidity levels would be the same, only, I guess different breed eggs may do it faster or slower. I am anxious to see what your results are, you're staying pretty close to 50% , and my next hatch will be 50% all the way thru.

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Hey, you have a real nice well rounded experiment. Are you going to record each breed hatch ratio?

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That's something else to think about. IMHO when people are talking about hatch ratios, they should specify whether they are talking about ratio of eggs that went into the incubator, or ratio of eggs that were developing at the time they went into the hatcher, and so on. For instance, I'm incubating araucana eggs -- and they are notorious for both low fertility AND for genetically-caused embryo death during incubation. So if I told you I got a 10% hatch ratio, folks might think I was doing something terribly wrong -- when, in fact, my conditions might be spot on. Yet another complication to factor in!