jenniferlamar70
Songster
That looks almost the same as the chart in my book.I really have wondered about this myself. I started out using the automatic turner in my old (borrowed, if you can call it that since I still have it, two years later...lol) Little Giant 9200. My first hatch was pretty much a bust because I bought a thermometer for it and never checked it. Never in a million years would I think a brand new thermometer would be 6 degrees off!!! Ended up with one survivor hatched day 24. After that I bought 2 other thermometers and made sure they were accurate. And I did a lot of reading on understanding humidity. (I also had my humidity high because of the info I'd read both online and in the book my sister gave me.) I decided to adapt the low humidity methods. Started having great hatches. Then I did a hatch that filled the turner. Prior to this I always kept my eggs back away from the corner that the turner was in because it gave off so much heat and that corner would stay quite a bit warmer. But with the full turner I couldn't. The three eggs closest the turner had excellerated growth and then quit by day 5. So I decided to just take them out and try hand turning. I found I liked hand turning so I continued with it and my hatch rates just kept climbing. I hand turn 3xs a day sometimes I get in 5, but not often. I really think that "more is better" might not be the case. I know people are always saying that the broodies are constantly turning the eggs, but from what I witnessed from the broody, and no you can't see under them to really know, but the "turning" they do is slight adjustments. It's not like they make sure that the egg is turned to the other side. It's small adjustments done more frequently. So in my logic, they aren't going from side to side 5-9 times a day. I really wonder if we do turn too much. 3xs a day has seemed to be a good number for me. This is the Cobb's chart I use:
