4 Dead in Shell Humidity too high or too low?

[yinepu]

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I'm going to have to stick with my first assessment that the humidity was too high and that they drowned in their shells

 

[Cynthia12]

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Ahh, watery, or thick gooy stuff. Usually means too much humidity during incubation. We are right next door to you, I live in Utah.
I am one that does not worry about humidity until lock down. I usually have mine around the high 30's, or even lower. I was tired of babies drowning during pipping time.

 

[Gypsy07]

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I'm going to have to stick with my first assessment that the humidity was too high and that they drowned in their shells

Yup, I totally agree with you. It's just that with the initial information given, I don't think anyone could have been certain about that, until we got the additional info that the dead chicks were very watery. But with HutsonHeritage saying that all the chicks that hatched were healthy and fine, I wonder if the problem was more that two different types of eggs were being incubated. The humidity was fine for his/her own eggs, but too high for the shipped ones. Maybe they had tougher shells and didn't lose moisture as quickly, or something. I don't like incubating eggs from all different places for just that reason. The chicken eggs I'm incubating right now are 18 shipped ones, and four of my own that I stuck in as a control group. My own eggs are losing moisture much quicker than the shipped ones, and I'm considering splitting them into two different bators so I can adjust the humidity levels as required.

As for recommended humidity levels, what suits one person won't necessarily suit another. I live in Glasgow, which is about the wettest darn place in Europe. The one and only time I tried dry incubation of chicken eggs (without a hygrometer and after being told on here that it was the only way to go in damp climates) I ended up with a bunch of eggs that lost 25% of their starting weight by day 16 and a bunch of chick embryos that were extremely dead and dried up into sad little crispy lumps.

In contrast, I'm currently incubating ducks. All advice on here says they need a higher humidity than chicks, right? Well, at the moment my chicken eggs are incubating at 45% and getting on (mostly) fine. In contrast, the duck eggs weren't losing weight fast enough so at day 12 I removed all the water from their bator and am now dry incubating them. Humidity was 45% for the first 12 days, which was too high. It's now sitting at 25%, they're on day 20, and I'm still concerned I won't get them to the right lockdown weight.

Humidity is a funny old bird, really it is...