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I have a few questions that this discussion and the incubation hint sheet bring up...First, what difference would it make for doing dry incubation for someone living in Phoenix Az versus the Olympic penninsula or maybe somewhere like Ohio in the summer where I hear it is very humid? Just wondering if people in very dry environments have used dry incubation, or just humid areas.
Also, the directions on one of my incubators (can't recall which) says that for the last 3 days you can turn the temp down 2 or 3 degrees but that it is not necessary. ChookChicks, your cheat sheet part about using egg cartons after removing the turner makes me wonder if my instructions are correct on this. I don't think I ever saw anything anywhere else about turning the heat down the last 3 days, so I'm wondering what all you experienced hatchers think about the heat the last 3 days.
Also, I often see people say to set the temp at 99.5 degrees, period. But for a still air incubator, I thought the temp was suppposed to be a full 2 degrees higher, and that the 99.5 is just for ones with forced air. Maybe it depends on where the thermometers are placed, and if placed right, you can use 99.5 for still air?
I need to go back and read through the old threads on incubation. Ha, that will give me something to do now that the NY hatch is about over, sob. I have gotten quite accustomed to having this fun thread to come read during the cold winter!!!
I was looking at the spreadsheet of hatch percentage results, and I'm surprised that so many of us had about a 50% hatch rate, and many of us had way way less. Only a very few people had hatches over about 80%, it looks like. I'm surprised and expected most to get about 75%, and just a few of us to get none to very few, which would bring the average down. It's true that lots of us were using shipped eggs, so some of those would have been shaken up or xrayed or frozen, so possibly that's why rates were low. I'm pretty sure somewhere there's a link to where to see total participants, hatch rate, etc for a year or 2 ago, so now I'd like to see that info again. I'm curious whether our results this year are right in line w/ other years. It certainly seemed like a LOT of people had horrid luck like spikes in temp, and an appalling number of people seemed to find their incubators unplugged by other people, grrrrrr!!!, especially maddening because preventable, in theory!
Well, I'd best sign off or everybody will be exhausted just reading my one post, HA!!!
Great post with many great questions and observations.....some I was thinking myself. I, too, was surprised at the low hatch rates. I wonder if it would have been a lot better if so many incubator mishaps hadn't happened.
I had my humidity too high and was having a lot of dead in shell chicks. I've just started doing the dry incubation method on ChookChick's page. I only started it halfway through the NYD hatch so it really wasn't a true test, but the Valentines Day hatch will be the true test.
