Will my feather babies hatch?? It's already day 22 of incubation.

Great article and info. Thanks y'all! I did order a hygrometer/thermometer that's supposed to be on my mailbox this am. My concern with dry incubation is opening the incubator lid too frequently to check out the air cell size?? I've been running the incubator all night, but I don't have my new hygrometer and thermometer to check it. I have eggs that must go in today, so I have to decide today....dry, or not? I'm just undecided.

WVChickNboots said:

Great article and info. Thanks y'all! I did order a hygrometer/thermometer that's supposed to be on my mailbox this am. My concern with dry incubation is opening the incubator lid too frequently to check out the air cell size?? I've been running the incubator all night, but I don't have my new hygrometer and thermometer to check it. I have eggs that must go in today, so I have to decide today....dry, or not? I'm just undecided.

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Technically you can get away with only checking the air cells and marking at day 7&14 then again day 18 of course for lockdown. I candle on a fairly daiy basis. Not my whole hatch, just a spot check throughout the bator. Opening the bator during incubation doesn't hurt anything unless you have trouble keeping your temps steady. Then it could cause issues I suppose. The biggest time that opening the bator is going to potentially cause problems is during lockdown/hatch when it is the most important to have your humidity raised, and even then if you have your humidity up (I use 75% at hatch) then the chances of that causing problems is very slight.

You can always start dry or "low humidity" incubation and can switch if you aren't comfortable or vice a versa. You don't have to run completely dry for the whole hatch. Actually if you are running dry and the air cells start growing too big the proper thing is to up your humidity. That is why I like this method so well, I am following the needs of eggs to control the humidity. I am fairly confident that if I have a bad hatch it won't be due to humidity issues.

Pick what is comfortable for you and try that. You can always change if it is not working for you.

Great advice. Let's go candle some eggs, and get them placed in the bator. Gonna try the low humidity method, instead of dry, and see how this goes.