Humidity when incubating Marans eggs, increase, decrease, or same? - Page 4

"john in wa" ~ Do you have any idea what your ambient humidity level is? I'm curious if a high/low surrounding humidity is making a difference for you? I'm currently just running a "test" run to see how it does...I've got the Octagon Advance which I originally set at 45% RH. I weighed the eggs at day 7, and they were lower than they should have been, so I raised the RH to 48%. Planned on raising it to at least 70% the last 3 days, but I'm not sure I want to do that if that might be causing the "stickiness".

Appreciate your input!

john in wa,,funny you mention filling the water resivoir all the way and adding more sponges,,,I do the same,except thru the entire hatch,,I do open my ventilation slots until I have a constant 45% humidity,,the last 3 days I fill and keep filled,and close the slotted openings all the way shut,,humidity gets up to 50-55% and stays there without opening the door to peek inside.I actually hate to listen to that small brushless motor run on the humidity pump all the time  I've had excellent results this way,last year was my first ever attempt at peafowl eggs,,after candling over 60 eggs  bought and shipped to me from June-August,,40 deemed good and I hatched all 40 of them,,,I think I could hatch a rock if it was fertile in my Brinsea,,,,set it and forget it!!

I am in the dry half of the state.  The humidity in the house is 20 give or take.  I just filled both trays last night and since my post i started thinking about it and i just snapped a photo of the temp and humidity in the room. I then just a couple minutes ago put it in the incubator to see whats its running.  Humidity is right now at 40 and i think it will level out at right around 45.  Now if i don't have a good hatch this Tuesday I'm really going to feel like DIP ****.  I would also say DO NOT Take my word as gold. like i said last night this is what is working for me.  Do a lot of reading and try other methods till you find a method that works for you and your incubator. I just bought some BCM eggs from Marans of MS and this is how they will be hatched when they get here. I also under stand that i may have a 100% or 0% hatch or any where in between.. I'm really wanting to hatch some nice roosters out of her eggs to dress up my girls a little.


this is room temp right now.


as soon as it has leveled out i will let you know what the incubator is at. temp by the little springfeild is reading 99.5 and humidity is running 43.

Today is the day. We got 1 zipping 3 pips and 2 im not sure about.  I got to go to town so im sure when i get home ill have a chick or two.

  Congrats! Thanks for sharing info & keep us posted!

My ambient RH is usually around 50 or more, so I would think that would make a huge difference...guess we'll see how mine goes for this first run in the new bator. I will candle again the end of the week to see what we're looking like before next week's hatch.

Ok just got home 2 chicks are out. 1 more zipping and other 3 eggs have pips.

So what is the MINIMUM humidity it should be for the first 18 days for marans?
We are running a wood stove for heat and it's dry even tho the humidifier is running constantly.

I'm going to throw a can of worms out in the middle of this conversation...

I SAND some of the coloring off of mine (only when shipped) and add NO water until day 19, then I go to 60 or 65% for the hatch.

I have consistently found that when I do this I get great hatches. When I don't, the egg doesn't evaporate enough, thus not losing enough moisture, and I have losses during the last 3 days, prior to hatch.

I use no water for the first 18 days in general, but I use an emery board to remove some of the brown to increase evaporative qualities for the first part. On my own eggs, I don't do this, but they usually go in the RCom incubator, and you simply can't compare it to the other incubators, plus the eggs have had optimum nutrition from the mother and they didn't get put through the mail...so they already have a bunch going for them.

I have pics somewhere of how I sand them...

Ah- here we go- I sent this to a customer back when I had my French Cuckoo Marans.





I just get past the color, then I mist the egg with Betadine water mixed to be like a dark iced tea- this replaces the bloom that just got sanded off...

Pop them into the incubator and there you have it!


Minimum humidity has been in the teens for me. I'm okay with that.

It figures it would be you that had this info. I was looking for sanding Marans eggs and there you were!