Thinking of calling it quits.

[retlaw]

There is far too much information lacking to give any kind of advice.

1. What is your elevation?
2. Are the majority of your eggs clear or are they quitting around lockdown?
3. What humidity are you incubating at and what humidity are you at for lockdown?
4. What kind of incubator are you using? Auto turner? Still air or forced air?
5. What is the status of your air vents during lockdown?
6. What is the procedure that you use for storing eggs prior to incubation?

1. I am at about 1080 feet in elevation.
2. 40% are clear. Roughly.
3. Incubation is at 42% humidity, lock-down is 72%.
4. Home made one with build in hand operated turner. Can turn all eggs in one second.
Has a small fan circulating the air.
5 Lock-down vents are wide open. For lock-down I use an old Redwood Incubator from the old days.
6. Eggs get stored in a cool dark pantry rotated twice daily and collected for a two week period before sent to incubator.

The breed is Blue slate cross Ridley Bronze.
Fourth year crossing them.





Here is my home made incubator. It holds seventy eggs.
runs on two light bulbs on the bottom, one on always and the other on a thermostat.




You can see the thermostat between the heat shield from the bulb and the fan blowing on the thermostat.
The air gets sucked from behind the fan from a duct that comes from the top of the incubator.
There is a hole drilled (1 1/2in) in the duct side to add fresh air.
The rocks are to store thermo mass, they are basalt.
Have a pot of water with the rocks for humidity and a tray of water on top of the wire grates over one light bulb.





To turn the eggs I just have to pull the rod on the left that comes through the side of the incubator.
The rollers are hitched to small gears on a laid out fan belt track.
I don't have to open the incubator to do this.





And here is the old Redwood lock-down station.


Incubator temperature is in the 98.4 F zone. Slight ups and downs from that. Have a new incubator thermometer that goes to a tenths of a degree and says its ten times more accurate them other thermometers..
And the Redwood lock-down station is at 97.5 F
If the eggs are clean I don't do anything to them and if they are dirty i try rubbing them clean but if they still stay dirty I give them a little water wash before placing them in the incubator.

Is there anything that I missed?

 

[R2elk]

Quote:
1. Your elevation is fine and should not be causing any problems.
2. 40% clears is not good and can be caused by a number of factors. Too many toms interfering with each other can be a cause. Older tom and hens can also be a problem. A tom more interested in playing on a hen's back instead of just getting on and getting the job done can also be a cause. Too closely related tom and hens can be a cause of low fertility.
3. These are reasonable humidity amounts if your hygrometer is accurate although I like around 30% humidity for incubation. Proper air cell growth is more important than whether or not the humidity number is accurate during the incubation process.
4. Are your eggs marked in a manner that you can easily verify that they have actually turned? How many times daily do you turn the eggs? Have you verified with a calibrated thermometer that the temperature is uniform throughout the incubator?
5. Should be alright. Hatching creates increased CO2 levels making it very important to have good air circulation keeping the oxygen levels up and the carbon dioxide levels down.
6. The recommendation is to rotate stored eggs a minimum of 3 times daily and to not store them for more than 7 - 10 days. I have stored eggs for 2 weeks and had 90%+ hatches.

I assume that your eggs are being turned back and forth and not being constantly turned in the same direction. It has been proven to be detrimental to hatching to always turn the egg in the same direction.

Recommended temperature for a forced air incubator is 99.5° to 100.0°F with a reduction to 98.5° to 99.0°F during lockdown.

Because of how eggs are incubated naturally by the hens, I am not convinced that opening the incubator to hand turn eggs is a bad thing since it allows a big inflow of fresh air.

Good luck.

 

[retlaw]

1. Your elevation is fine and should not be causing any problems.
2. 40% clears is not good and can be caused by a number of factors. Too many toms interfering with each other can be a cause. Older tom and hens can also be a problem. A tom more interested in playing on a hen's back instead of just getting on and getting the job done can also be a cause. Too closely related tom and hens can be a cause of low fertility.
3. These are reasonable humidity amounts if your hygrometer is accurate although I like around 30% humidity for incubation. Proper air cell growth is more important than whether or not the humidity number is accurate during the incubation process.
4. Are your eggs marked in a manner that you can easily verify that they have actually turned? How many times daily do you turn the eggs? Have you verified with a calibrated thermometer that the temperature is uniform throughout the incubator?
5. Should be alright. Hatching creates increased CO2 levels making it very important to have good air circulation keeping the oxygen levels up and the carbon dioxide levels down.
6. The recommendation is to rotate stored eggs a minimum of 3 times daily and to not store them for more than 7 - 10 days. I have stored eggs for 2 weeks and had 90%+ hatches.

I assume that your eggs are being turned back and forth and not being constantly turned in the same direction. It has been proven to be detrimental to hatching to always turn the egg in the same direction.

Recommended temperature for a forced air incubator is 99.5° to 100.0°F with a reduction to 98.5° to 99.0°F during lockdown.

Because of how eggs are incubated naturally by the hens, I am not convinced that opening the incubator to hand turn eggs is a bad thing since it allows a big inflow of fresh air.

Good luck.

My tom is his first year,
one hen is 5,
one hen is 4,
two hens are 2,
two hens are 1,

I started breeding five years ago with three blood lines of Blue slates with a Ridley bronze added in so I don't think inbreeding is the problem but I can't rule out genetics.

What could be the issue for low breeding is the 4 year old ridley bronze.
She is very active in trying to get bred.
To the point where the tom doesn't get interested.
I only keep one tom.
She has always been like this.
She could be steeling all of his attention.
I had her with other toms and the same thing.

The eggs get turned back and forth twice a day full flip and sometimes in the day I do partial turns meaning I turn them just a quarter turn.
At the temperature I am running I get the hatch starting at the right time being 28 days.
When I ran warmer I was getting them hatching at 26 days so I backed it off a little.

I can reduce incubation humidity to 30% with no problems.
I can borrow a CO2 meter and find out the levels.

I have 21 hitting lock down tonight.
I candle them before they get transferred stations.
Got my fingers crossed but expecting a kick in the pants.

 

[feedman77]

Hope those going into lockdown are a surprising success.

 

[co2002guardian]

Still in search of poults near the northwest Oregon coast.

 

[R2elk]

My tom is his first year,
one hen is 5,
one hen is 4,
two hens are 2,
two hens are 1,

I started breeding five years ago with three blood lines of Blue slates with a Ridley bronze added in so I don't think inbreeding is the problem but I can't rule out genetics.

What could be the issue for low breeding is the 4 year old ridley bronze.
She is very active in trying to get bred.
To the point where the tom doesn't get interested.
I only keep one tom.
She has always been like this.
She could be stealing all of his attention.
I had her with other toms and the same thing.

The eggs get turned back and forth twice a day full flip and sometimes in the day I do partial turns meaning I turn them just a quarter turn.

At the temperature I am running I get the hatch starting at the right time being 28 days.
When I ran warmer I was getting them hatching at 26 days so I backed it off a little.

I can reduce incubation humidity to 30% with no problems.
I can borrow a CO2 meter and find out the levels.

I have 21 hitting lock down tonight.
I candle them before they get transferred stations.
Got my fingers crossed but expecting a kick in the pants.

My recommendation is to greatly increase the number of times that you turn the eggs daily. You should also use an odd number of turns so that the eggs aren't always resting on the same side every night. There has been plenty of research done on turning eggs with the conclusion being that the more times the eggs are turned the better the hatch is. The new Sportsman incubators actuate their auto turners once an hour which is an increase over the old models which auto-turned every three hours.

The temperatures that you are running at to get hatching on day 28 indicate that your thermometer needs to be calibrated.

I got my best hatches when the poults hatched on day 27.

Good luck.

 

[retlaw]

My recommendation is to greatly increase the number of times that you turn the eggs daily. You should also use an odd number of turns so that the eggs aren't always resting on the same side every night. There has been plenty of research done on turning eggs with the conclusion being that the more times the eggs are turned the better the hatch is. The new Sportsman incubators actuate their auto turners once an hour which is an increase over the old models which auto-turned every three hours.

The temperatures that you are running at to get hatching on day 28 indicate that your thermometer needs to be calibrated.

I got my best hatches when the poults hatched on day 27.

Good luck.

That is something I can do with very little effort.
Thanks for the tips.

Last year I ran it a little warmer and I was getting eggs hatching at the 25 day.
What I found is the eggs get warmer then the air in the incubator.

 

[feedman77]

So how is the hatch going with the ones in lockdown.

Any of them out yet.

 

[retlaw]

Well the 4 poults from 62 eggs is down to three living.

latest batch.
Out of 21eggs 8 made it to lockdown.
4 are alive but one was malpostioned.
That one has leg issues but is breathing heavy so I will wait to see if it is even worth it to fix the leg.

 

[feedman77]

Sorry for the bad hatch again.

Hope the hard breather pulls through.

There has been some good advice given. I couldn't add any. As my hatch rates have been abysmal this year as well.

What ever decision you make will be a hard one either xalling it quits or trying another round.

Wishing you the best either way.