- Mar 6, 2012
- 16
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I'm in SD and we run them at 49 to 52 percent for the whole hatch. I also have a wet bulb to to verify that the relative humidity is on track.
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I'm in SD and we run them at 49 to 52 percent for the whole hatch. I also have a wet bulb to to verify that the relative humidity is on track.
I'm in Colorado and generally don't worry about humidity unless it gets under 20 (settles around 40%ish- sometimes higher sometimes lower). During lockdown, I try to never go above 65.
I've never had a good hatch going from lower elevation to almost 7000. We just dont have enough oxygen up here even with all the vents open.
I've tried doing a wet incubation for shipped eggs with little luck.
HI. My feeling is that waiting until day 8 is too long without regular rotation of the eggs...I have had success waiting about 1-2 days tops to start turning eggs. I like my humidity a bit lower during first 18 days...around 35% ...it will dip to 20-25% and then I add a bit of water to get it to 35-40%. I am not at high altitude...I have had eggs from Montana and Oregon and Washington shipped here to AZ and have had a decent hatch rate thus far...maybe going from higher altitude to lower is easier on eggs than going to even higher altitude?? I would think that local eggs would give you better odds. Keeping my fingers crossed for the 2 strugglers (-;Ok, I ordered hatching eggs and ended up with a 5/22 hatch.
Two of the chicks that hatched have partially absorbed yoke sacs. One is fiesty and recovering the other is very droopy and I am trying to work with it.
I followed hatching advise for at altitude hatching of shipped eggs (thats where I got my goals for humidity and keeping both vent plugs open)
Eggs arrived and rested 18 hours
Into the incubator with the turner off for 7 or 8 days, then turned on the turner
Temp was at 99.5 +/- 0.2 and stayed steady.
Targeted 55% humidity and was able to keep it between 50-55% for the first 18 days. Had a drop on day 12, down to 32% overnight
Increased humidity to target 65% for lockdown. Spiked to 75% on the evening of the 21st. I had aid a chick in trouble so I refilled the wells while I was at it and some spilled causing the spike.
*Humidity targets were taken from some high altitude hatching advise pages including one by a local breeder I know
I candled on days
5 (verify air cell stability before turning on the turner)
7(air cell stability again)
10 (looking for development, tossing bloodrings)
14 (final toss of any obviously bad eggs)
16 (outlining air cells to determine who would go into a carton. There were enough funky ones that I just put everyone into cartons)
Stopped turning the evening of day 17, again to help the aircells and chick alignment given advise from shipped egg experts.
I am by no means an expert at candling and chose to error on the side of caution and include possibly bad eggs rather than risk tossing good eggs that just looked off. 19 eggs went into lockdown, 5 eggs that went into lockdown were questionable, 5 hatched, the rest I tested this afternoon and found were dead. 2 of the 5 that hatched had protruding yoke sacs, one not so badly but it was the last to hatch and is sluggish. The other had a worse sac but has been very lively.
I will post pics in the next post; for some reason my internet freezes when loading pics to BYC sometimes and I don't want to loose the details again.
I need to know if there is anything anyone can pick out as the likely cause of demise so I can fix it for the next batch. I really don't want to have this happen again...
Again, Warning, EGGTOPSY PICS follow...
HI. My feeling is that waiting until day 8 is too long without regular rotation of the eggs...I have had success waiting about 1-2 days tops to start turning eggs. I like my humidity a bit lower during first 18 days...around 35% ...it will dip to 20-25% and then I add a bit of water to get it to 35-40%. I am not at high altitude...I have had eggs from Montana and Oregon and Washington shipped here to AZ and have had a decent hatch rate thus far...maybe going from higher altitude to lower is easier on eggs than going to even higher altitude?? I would think that local eggs would give you better odds. Keeping my fingers crossed for the 2 strugglers (-;
I did a run with local eggs, dry hatch at 40% humidity. I upped it to 65% at hatch. 7 chicks hatched of the 21 in lockdown. I discovered I have uneven humidity in the incubator which influenced the hatch. I eggtopsied 5. 4 were fully developed and two of those had internal pips. The other looked like it quit around day 18.UPDATE
I opened one and it looked like it died awhile ago - like halfway through. I am such a weenie I can't bring myself to open any more. It is really hard to do this at this altitude, I never had any problems when I lived at sea level...