➡ Quail Hatch Along🥚

[Nabiki]

What brand of incubator do you have?

It's this one. Rite Farm 1200

 

[CindyinSD]

No progress this morning.

I'm worried about the humidity level while I'm at work. I'm scared to open the incubator to fill one of the water channels with the pipped egg(s) (I only see one, but it's hard to see through the incubator walls), but putting water in a pipette at a time isn't going to work well and fills the wrong channel. There are several channels, two narrow and three wide. Filling a narrow channel gives about a 65% humidity level that drops to about 40% in 2-4 hours. Filling a wide channel puts it up to 80% or over, still dropping to about 40% in 2-4 hours.

Probably not gonna be much help this time, but I bought a syringe that came with plastic tubing that fits on the syringe tip. (Amazon, 2-pack) I put the tubing through the vent hole and slowly inject the water into a place over the water channel I want to fill and away from the eggs so as not to get them wet. You can also slip it under the lid, then under the mat once you stop turning, and into the desired channel. I didn’t do this, but it would be helpful to check how many cc’s each channel will hold before overflowing into the next one.

You can fill the channels as deep as you like without increasing humidity any more than a shallow fill would do. You can also put in a small mason jar (jelly jar) with a wet sponge in it. Put a piece of cheese cloth or similar over the top and put the ring on to keep babies from drowning themselves in the sponge.

You can open the incubator briefly without dropping the humidity for a very long time. Better that than risk it running dry later.

 

[Sara L]

No progress this morning.

I'm worried about the humidity level while I'm at work. I'm scared to open the incubator to fill one of the water channels with the pipped egg(s) (I only see one, but it's hard to see through the incubator walls), but putting water in a pipette at a time isn't going to work well and fills the wrong channel. There are several channels, two narrow and three wide. Filling a narrow channel gives about a 65% humidity level that drops to about 40% in 2-4 hours. Filling a wide channel puts it up to 80% or over, still dropping to about 40% in 2-4 hours.

Can you add a wet sponge or pieces of sponge? That will keep the humidity up longer than just filling the channels.

 

[RUNuts]

New adventures since last night.
Quail laid an egg in the waterer. Pooping in the waterer is bad enough, but laying an egg in the waterer? This is new. Auto water cups on order since I put the first order in a "safe" place until I needed them. I need them and can't find them. Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

3 quail babies bopping around nicely.

Thunderstorms yesterday and 10 chicken chicks decided to sleep in the bush in the chicken run. I had to pick the chickens and get them back to the tractor. This morning, one was sitting on top. I missed one last night.

Still don't know who is crowing in the mornings. 9.5 weeks old and one is stretching his vocal cords too much. I let them out of the tractor and no one makes a peep.

 

[Kiki]

No progress this morning.

I'm worried about the humidity level while I'm at work. I'm scared to open the incubator to fill one of the water channels with the pipped egg(s) (I only see one, but it's hard to see through the incubator walls), but putting water in a pipette at a time isn't going to work well and fills the wrong channel. There are several channels, two narrow and three wide. Filling a narrow channel gives about a 65% humidity level that drops to about 40% in 2-4 hours. Filling a wide channel puts it up to 80% or over, still dropping to about 40% in 2-4 hours.

Don't worry... lower humidity is fine...better in my opinion.

 

[Nabiki]

Can you add a wet sponge or pieces of sponge? That will keep the humidity up longer than just filling the channels.

I do add a piece of sponge, but it seems to dry out pretty fast.

 

[RUNuts]

I do add a piece of sponge, but it seems to dry out pretty fast.

Use a jelly jar, as tall as possible, that will fit in your incubator. Limits surface area, but huge reservoir that won't dry out. Challenge is how much room for the jar.

I did this for the chicken hatch and only needed 5% increase in humidity. The trays gave closer to 15% bump using the smallest tray.

 

[007Sean]

I was going to say what Sara and Cindy already have said, but I also agree with Kiki, I've hatched pheasants with the humidity at 29% and there wasn't any problems...it wasn't by design though, just forgot to look at it before I went to work. most of the time I have the humidity set around 50 to 55% when they are hatching. No stuck or shrink wrapped chicks.

 

[007Sean]

I do add a piece of sponge, but it seems to dry out pretty fast.

I noticed the fan that it uses, does it put out alot of circulation?

 

[Nabiki]

Use a jelly jar, as tall as possible, that will fit in your incubator. Limits surface area, but huge reservoir that won't dry out. Challenge is how much room for the jar.

I did this for the chicken hatch and only needed 5% increase in humidity. The trays gave closer to 15% bump using the smallest tray.

I like this idea. This will really help with keeping the humidity around 30% during regular incubation without having to get up every 2 hours during the night.

I noticed the fan that it uses, does it put out alot of circulation?

It seems to, which is why it dries things out so fast, I'm sure.