Humidity and Turkey Eggs

Size doesn't necessarily have anything to do with humidity requirements, despite the change in surface area to volume ratio. Rather, it has to do with the permeability of the egg, and I assume waterfowl eggs will be subjected to a higher humidity in the wild since the nests are closer to water, while a desert animal would normally incubate at a much lower humidity. I've only incubated one batch of turkey eggs and I incubated them alongside my chicken eggs. Most things I dry incubate, with the exception of guineas. They have thicker shells but for some reason seem to need a higher humidity.
 
Size doesn't necessarily have anything to do with humidity requirements, despite the change in surface area to volume ratio. Rather, it has to do with the permeability of the egg, and I assume waterfowl eggs will be subjected to a higher humidity in the wild since the nests are closer to water, while a desert animal would normally incubate at a much lower humidity. I've only incubated one batch of turkey eggs and I incubated them alongside my chicken eggs. Most things I dry incubate, with the exception of guineas. They have thicker shells but for some reason seem to need a higher humidity. 


I somewhat disagree. Size does play a roll as well as shell thickness and porosity. I had silkie eggs last year that I was waiting on to receive. I had gathered 4 of my nn/ee eggs, which are jumbo sized. When the silkie eggs came they were small. Bantam small. I had reservations about setting them with the smaller eggs because I need to run dry for them to loose enough. The silkies needed a slightly higher humidity. I had to run 45% for them and my jumbo eggs did not loose enough moisture. 2 managed to hatched ok, but were extra wet, the other two grew too big, couldn't turn. One pipped through the membrane at the bottom, but didn't pierce the shell and drowned on the extra fluid. The other pipped through the shell at the bottom, luckily I noticed it and was able to widen the pip and set her upright to keep her from aspirating on the extra fluid . She was a bit weak at first but made a full recovery.

Bigger the egg, the more moisture they need to loose. Unless the big eggs do have relatively thinner shells that loose moisture faster than normal, to average out the moisture loss, I would do significantly different sized eggs separately. I believe it's safer to say the size in conjunction with shell quality, will determine the success. If I ran humidity low for the silkies, they would have lost way too much moisture.
 
I somewhat disagree. Size does play a roll as well as shell thickness and porosity. I had silkie eggs last year that I was waiting on to receive. I had gathered 4 of my nn/ee eggs, which are jumbo sized. When the silkie eggs came they were small. Bantam small. I had reservations about setting them with the smaller eggs because I need to run dry for them to loose enough. The silkies needed a slightly higher humidity. I had to run 45% for them and my jumbo eggs did not loose enough moisture. 2 managed to hatched ok, but were extra wet, the other two grew too big, couldn't turn. One pipped through the membrane at the bottom, but didn't pierce the shell and drowned on the extra fluid. The other pipped through the shell at the bottom, luckily I noticed it and was able to widen the pip and set her upright to keep her from aspirating on the extra fluid . She was a bit weak at first but made a full recovery.

Bigger the egg, the more moisture they need to loose. Unless the big eggs do have relatively thinner shells that loose moisture faster than normal, to average out the moisture loss, I would do significantly different sized eggs separately. I believe it's safer to say the size in conjunction with shell quality, will determine the success. If I ran humidity low for the silkies, they would have lost way too much moisture.

I don't think that has to do with the size though because over half of my flock are bantams and I hatch their eggs at the same humidity as the large eggs. The only difference I find with them is that they tend to hatch a wee bit sooner.

Overall, a bigger egg does need to lose more moisture simply because it has more moisture (in volume), but I think the percentage loss is about the same, taking into account that the shell and yolk make up a higher percentage of the overall weight and composition in a bantam egg. If I stick a LF and a bantam egg under my broody, they incubate at the same humidity and temp and both hatch fine.

Admittedly, my setup is different than some people that hatch simply because I have more than one incubator, and I can move an egg to the hatcher sooner or later based on what I see going on in the egg. I have waited to move eggs to the incubator if it looked like they needed to lose more moisture, and moved some early if it looked like they needed to slow down. I am talking about eggs of the same species, same size, same clutch.
 

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