December Hatch - Keeping our fingers crossed =)

Oh Hello - for those of you who don't know me.
Well my Name is Steve and my son's name is Jacob and my Wife's name is LeeAnn and we are Incubating chicken eggs!
We have a dozen different breeds eggs in all different colors and sizes.
Wow - we are so excited!
Just candled and found many eggs showing signs of life at day 5 this is SO COOL!
Ok - So were running two incubators a Bower 845/114003 old school still air unit with 44 eggs.
A JANOEL8-48 forced air unit with 48 eggs.

Want to give a shout out to DB and all the others for the help with our Bower Unit! Thanks guys!

Will try to update as time will allow on our progress!

This is SO FUN! Jacob my son is way excited!

Best of luck with your hatch!

Well Hello all - Updates
Well our Bower Incubator which is now on day 9 and is a old school hand turn 3 times a day still air unit has confirmed 32 embryos and growing fast.
We did however have 12 eggs that did not develop. Which is sad.
Our temps are running between 98 to 102 and I have replaced the wafer but with no change in fluctuation of temps.
The humidity is averaging around 45 but sometimes swings a little lower and higher but mostly steady at around 45.

Our JANOEL8-48 forced air with turner which is now on day 6 and has a little different out come with what we think is around 32 fertile eggs but is extremely difficult to see the embryos because of the way the eggs are not actually laying on their sides and the eggs are actually titled and not turned if this makes sense to anyone gives us concern.
Also with this Incubator we had again 12 eggs that we not fertile and were removed.
The plus with this incubator is the very steady temps and humidity. Temp 99.5 Humidity 48.

All in all we are having a great time incubating and are very excited.

So questions for anyone who may know or has that time to respond.

1. Is the amount of eggs lost in our case 12 per incubator a direct reflection of say poor fertilization from our roosters? Or is this common? I'm thinking we might have a issue here with our roosters but I thought I would ask around first.

2. Does anyone understand my point where I attempt to explain the embryo development with eggs in out JANOEL8-48 with turner.
Where it's very difficult to actually see the embryo develop due to the fact that the egg is only tilted and is not actually laying on it's side thus allowing the egg yoke to float to the top near the air sake where the embryo is developing just out of view.

3. Does humidity say higher then 45 this early in the incubation affect the eggs air sack? I think I know the answer to this one but I thought I would ask.

I know I have more questions but I'll ask later on in our incubation.
Thanks for following along.

Thank you for the update! It sounds like things are going well, but what are the odds of the same number of eggs failing to develop in each incubator?

The failure to develop/infertility can be a rooster problem, but there are other possible causes, there is a full list and more details here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/egg-failure-to-hatch-diagnosing-incubation-problems

If you haven't discarded those eggs yet, I'd suggest you keep them in the incubators and candle and check again on day 10, by which time you should be able to tell for sure if they are developing or not.

I do understand what you're saying about the misplaced egg yolk. I've never incubated eggs upright and have never seen this.

The humidity does effect the air cell development at the early stages and also during the later stages, but as long as it is growing as it should I wouldn't worry about it. I usually incubate at 45%-50% and had good results at that.

Thank you Sumi for your response and for the link. Very helpful and informative.
I'm thinking that we might have a age issue with our roosters being to old. Trust me we will be removing this possible problem from the list.
I think that in our JANOEL8-48 with turner that if we have a poor hatch rate that we will remove the turner because it's really not turning the eggs it's tilting them and I know were new at this but to me this doesn't seem at least to me that it's actually turning the eggs enough. We will know in about a week.
Thanks Again.

Tilting the eggs are as good as turning them, so long as they get turned through a 90* tilt, i.e. 45* over one way, then 45* the opposite way. My Brinsea incubator tilts them that way.

Ok good to know thanks.

Hello all more updates -

We have two hatches hopefully coming in the next few days and some interesting updates and of course more questions.

So our Bower still air incubator had initially 44 eggs on day one. A dozen of those eggs ended up being not fertile. Along with one death brought our eggs count down to 31.
All seemed great until about day 14. When our temps plummeted and went haywire. They would drop to 93 and up to 103. Bought a new wafer and that didn't fix the problem.
Had to buy the whole switch wafer setup because the switch went bad but to me it didn't really help as much either. We still had fluctuation swings in our temps that I felt we not acceptable.
So I installed a small 4 inch fan blowing across the wafer setup and it works great now. Unfortunately we lost a few more eggs in the process.
We were down to 27 after this fiasco and I also feel that three more are probably not going to make it to hatch. So were actually down to 24 eggs.
Keeping our fingers crossed with the Bower incubator hatch.

The Janoel8-48 is running like a champ. Still 32 eggs going strong and very stable temps and humidity. Still a week to go all looks great here.

Questions - So humidity is key after day 18 and of course the Bower can't seem to hold a humidity above 50. I know it needs to be between 60 and 65.
So I have added extra water trays and plugged extra holes at an attempt to get the humidity higher with no luck. Any suggestions or help with this would be great.

So has anyone ever incubated more then one set of eggs at a time in one incubator? Meaning multiple hatch dates from assorted eggs that were placed in the incubator at different dates.
Will this effect the eggs not expected to hatch first?

Well guys thanks and until next time. Hopefully the next post I can add a photo or two of some baby chicks.

Well now hello all again - First signs of hatch beginning - this is so exciting! no little peeps yet but the first chick has started braking through the egg shell.
Will keep you all posted as to the progress.

Six baby's so far - real sticky egg shells sticking to chicks. Anyone know how to prevent this issue or can this be prevented?