Adjusting humidity based on egg weight

[jeapa]

actually the ideal tranpiration is 13% by day 21. So more like 11-12% by day 18.

7.1% sounds like 1.1% too much. That might not sounds like a lot but that is over 10% too much humidity loss so far imo.

I would make some adjustments. I have found the sweet spot in my incubator is 48%, lets assume it is for yours too, so you have been running 4% too low for 11 days (based on your measurements).

I would personally suggest you go for 55% (7% over 48%) to compensate for the final 7 days till lockdown.

On a final note, always aim for slightly too little rather than too much moisture loss. If they have some extra supplies when they are born that is fine, if they run out of moisture then they start feeding on muscle mass instead, weakening the chicks. The consequence of slightly too much moisture is the chicks taking half an hour longer to dry (born wet) but the risk of being born too dry are much more serious causing chicks to get stuck in the shell.

Thank you for this great information. Since this is my first time incubating I am relying on research to guide me rather than personal experience. It seems there is a difference of opinion on whether a little too much moisture is harmful. Some things I have read say you risk drowning the chicks with too much. I think the dry incubation method is a way to avoid this problem? My inexperience led me to go with the middle road of 40-45%, which is also what was recommended by the manufacturer of the incubator I purchased, NR360.

This group of shipped eggs had larger air cells than the photos I saw of many day 0 eggs probably because they spent 5 days in shipping. At this point I think the air cells look about on target with photos I have seen on line except for 2 being saddle. Those 2 seem larger because of the saddle shape. I am nervous about raising the humidity too much for fear of possibly losing chicks to drowning. This is the stressful part. I feel as if my decisions are life and death for these chicks....

I probably should have gained more experience with this before jumping into shipped eggs of a rare breed. I let excitement get the better of me. I have a group of eggs from my flock incubating that will hatch 2 days before the Pita’s. They also started with 16 and are now down to 10. They had 4 clears and 2 early quitters.

 

[jeapa]

The range is 12%-16% depending on the freshness of the eggs and I wouldn't stress too much. I use the average egg weight as well. I struggle to get mine to lose 12% with the humidity reading 25% in my incubator but I have great hatch rates.

Before I set them I work out the average weight and mark that on a simple line graph with days 0-21 along the bottom and the weight range I will need up the side. Day 0 you mark the start weight. Then you work out whichever percentage of weight loss you are aiming for and work out what their weight should be on day 21. Draw a straight line from the Day 0 mark to the Day 21 mark and then on any day you can reweigh your eggs and see if they are tracking too far from that line. A bit of variance isn't anything to stress about. I've even worked it out for the two extremes so had two lines on my graph (though it's really not necessary - it was more for curiosities sake).

And if you think this bit is stressful wait until they are locked down and you are staring at them, just waiting for 'something' to happen.

Good luck with the hatch and let us know how it goes.

Thank you for your advice and details on your experience. The scientist in me wants to create that graph. I may do it right now lol.

I went ahead and figured the percentage for a few individual eggs and I noticed a pattern, all of my eggs have lost either 4g or 6g, but none of them lost 3g or 5G. So no odd numbers ??? Makes me question the validity of my scale. It seems my kitchen scale only weighs in 2g increments lol. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this when I first weighed the eggs. This certainly questions my ability to make any judgements at all with this inaccurate data. Ah well, I guess I should continue looking at the air cells and try to gauge by size? It probably wouldn’t do me any good now to purchase a better scale.

I will update when hatch is finished for sure.

 

[jeapa]

I will candle these eggs tomorrow night on day 14 and try and get a decent photo to post for opinions on how the air cells look.

Thank you everyone for your help.

 

[JaeG]

Thank you for your advice and details on your experience. The scientist in me wants to create that graph. I may do it right now lol.

I went ahead and figured the percentage for a few individual eggs and I noticed a pattern, all of my eggs have lost either 4g or 6g, but none of them lost 3g or 5G. So no odd numbers ??? Makes me question the validity of my scale. It seems my kitchen scale only weighs in 2g increments lol. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this when I first weighed the eggs. This certainly questions my ability to make any judgements at all with this inaccurate data. Ah well, I guess I should continue looking at the air cells and try to gauge by size? It probably wouldn’t do me any good now to purchase a better scale.

I will update when hatch is finished for sure.

I know what you mean - my old digital scales were great but the on/off button stopped working. My new scales I don't trust so much, especially for things that don't weigh a lot.

Saddled air cells can look scary but it's where the membrane has pulled away from the shell - it's not a massive void (even though that's how it looks). As long as the others are looking about right they should be fine too.

What are you hatching?

 

[jeapa]

I know what you mean - my old digital scales were great but the on/off button stopped working. My new scales I don't trust so much, especially for things that don't weigh a lot.

Saddled air cells can look scary but it's where the membrane has pulled away from the shell - it's not a massive void (even though that's how it looks). As long as the others are looking about right they should be fine too.

What are you hatching?

They are pita Pinta eggs. I ordered 12 and the breeder sent me 16. I have 10 that still look really good and 2 that I am not sure about as I can't see in them as well as the others.

The other batch from my flock will be mixes. I have a dominique roo and my pullets are:
dominique, production red, Blck aussie, EE, red laced wyandotte, light brahma.

 

[Mellowmalt]

The reason I worded my advice the way I worded it is because I have never had a problem from slightly too high humidity. Granted I've never tried ridiculously high but there will be a million people offering their advice and only a handful will have the experience to have some valuable info.

That is the first important step you should be aware of! Don't just trust people saying something blindly on the internet, it is a pet peeve of mine and with just a few questions you can find out if they have
a) ever even incubated eggs before
b) had any success dry incubating

People read something and then repeat it. Most the info is valid that gets blindly repeated by a thousand people.

But sometimes some odd info slips in there. For example embrio's are suspended in embrionic liquid for 20 days and never drown. Human babies are suspended in the womb in liquid for 9 whole months. Do you ever hear of them drowning in the womb? No you don't... So don't just believe some back yeard farmer coming up with a new theory on why his eggs didn't make his last incubation attempt. Who here will bother to make sure their thermometer is accurately calibrated? Not many, far few would prefer to just make up a random theory.

That is my take on the whole dry incubation malarky.

Eggs need to lose a certain amount of moisture. That is the bottom line. Jaeg mentions he can achieve the 12% needed on 25% humidity. I would have to question how accurate that reading is but if his instrument showing 25% is his sweet spot that is what works for him.

Humidity loss is not just determined by the humidity in the incubator. It will depend on the ambient temperature and humidity in the room, it will depend on the size of the ventilation holes, it will depend on the eggs inside the incubator, the incubator design and the air flow.

If you can get away with not adding any additional moisture to an incubator that saves hassle. But the aim is not just to run the incubator dry, the aim is to still achieve the perfect moisture loss.

I can pretty safely say that the smaller incubators tend to lose more moisture than the bigger incubators. So ask yourself how big is your incubator?

Can you copy what big egg breeding factories are doing or should you listen to people that actually incubate less than 20 eggs at a time. Again make sure you know who to trust when listening to advice.

The people mentioning drowning in the shell, I'd be very wary of. I would never blame a chick drowning in the shell, that is too inaccurate for my liking and not identifying the problem properly which will just lead to adjustments being made that will not improve anything.

You could do the same for human babies, occasionally there are complications there, if we were just to say all of them drown in the belly then our understanding of medicine would not improve much would it...

I should add as a note that I don't believe anybody recommends dry incubation out of bad intentions, the people that advocate dry incubation most of the time are people that failed on their first attempt and are trying something different.
Trying something different is all good but humidity should be the very last culprit blamed when it seems it is the easiest to adjust and thus is the prefered culprit identified.
The rate of moisture loss in the egg to me is an indication of development most and foremeost, the amount of liquid will go down as the embrio drinks and develops. Humidity should not be too low that all the eggs supplies dry out too fast but not too wet that they don't dry out fast enough.


I hope I have explained my point of view well enough that it all depends on circumstances.
If you were to picture incubation as a 21 day race across the sahara desert, all eggs have to make it to the finish line. All eggs have been given a little water pouch by mama hen. That water pouch needs to last the eggs the whole 21 days.
Bigger eggs will have a bigger pouch than smaller eggs but all eggs have to make it to the finish line by day 21..
How they get there depends on the person incubating keeping an eye on their progress.
If the desert gets too hot and dry then the smaller eggs will most definitely run out of water before reaching the finish line....

 

[jeapa]

The reason I worded my advice the way I worded it is because I have never had a problem from slightly too high humidity. Granted I've never tried ridiculously high but there will be a million people offering their advice and only a handful will have the experience to have some valuable info.

That is the first important step you should be aware of! Don't just trust people saying something blindly on the internet, it is a pet peeve of mine and with just a few questions you can find out if they have
a) ever even incubated eggs before
b) had any success dry incubating

People read something and then repeat it. Most the info is valid that gets blindly repeated by a thousand people.

But sometimes some odd info slips in there. For example embrio's are suspended in embrionic liquid for 20 days and never drown. Human babies are suspended in the womb in liquid for 9 whole months. Do you ever hear of them drowning in the womb? No you don't... So don't just believe some back yeard farmer coming up with a new theory on why his eggs didn't make his last incubation attempt. Who here will bother to make sure their thermometer is accurately calibrated? Not many, far few would prefer to just make up a random theory.

That is my take on the whole dry incubation malarky.

Eggs need to lose a certain amount of moisture. That is the bottom line. Jaeg mentions he can achieve the 12% needed on 25% humidity. I would have to question how accurate that reading is but if his instrument showing 25% is his sweet spot that is what works for him.

Humidity loss is not just determined by the humidity in the incubator. It will depend on the ambient temperature and humidity in the room, it will depend on the size of the ventilation holes, it will depend on the eggs inside the incubator, the incubator design and the air flow.

If you can get away with not adding any additional moisture to an incubator that saves hassle. But the aim is not just to run the incubator dry, the aim is to still achieve the perfect moisture loss.

I can pretty safely say that the smaller incubators tend to lose more moisture than the bigger incubators. So ask yourself how big is your incubator?

Can you copy what big egg breeding factories are doing or should you listen to people that actually incubate less than 20 eggs at a time. Again make sure you know who to trust when listening to advice.

The people mentioning drowning in the shell, I'd be very wary of. I would never blame a chick drowning in the shell, that is too inaccurate for my liking and not identifying the problem properly which will just lead to adjustments being made that will not improve anything.

You could do the same for human babies, occasionally there are complications there, if we were just to say all of them drown in the belly then our understanding of medicine would not improve much would it...

I should add as a note that I don't believe anybody recommends dry incubation out of bad intentions, the people that advocate dry incubation most of the time are people that failed on their first attempt and are trying something different.
Trying something different is all good but humidity should be the very last culprit blamed when it seems it is the easiest to adjust and thus is the prefered culprit identified.
The rate of moisture loss in the egg to me is an indication of development most and foremeost, the amount of liquid will go down as the embrio drinks and develops. Humidity should not be too low that all the eggs supplies dry out too fast but not too wet that they don't dry out fast enough.


I hope I have explained my point of view well enough that it all depends on circumstances.
If you were to picture incubation as a 21 day race across the sahara desert, all eggs have to make it to the finish line. All eggs have been given a little water pouch by mama hen. That water pouch needs to last the eggs the whole 21 days.
Bigger eggs will have a bigger pouch than smaller eggs but all eggs have to make it to the finish line by day 21..
How they get there depends on the person incubating keeping an eye on their progress.
If the desert gets too hot then the smaller eggs will most definitely run out of water before reaching the finish line....

Thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed reply. The point of weighing the eggs is to measure the moisture loss to ensure the egg loses the correct amount. So that was my initial question. Would the length of time these eggs had been in shipping when I set them make weights unusableI understand that the humidity levels should be set at the level that allows the eggs to lose enough but not too much moisture.

I assumed when a person thinks their chick drowned that the air cell was not large enough when the chick pipped internally. You make a good point about assumptions. Always check your sources. I am a published entomologist so I do understand this.

I also think advice from those with more experience than me is helpful. I don’t tend to ask for a person credentials on a forum like this, but I do research a ton before I make a decision to do something. It seems people are successful at many different humidity levels and I am sure their location is a big factor.

 

[jeapa]

Ok. I got some photos of my pita pintas eggs. They are on day 14. They aren’t the best but hopefully the experienced people can tell if the air cells look good. I’ll post 5 to give you an idea. 11 out of 16 eggs still look great. The chick embryo was moving around in all of them.

 

[JaeG]

I think they look good.

Only one more week to go!

 

[jeapa]

I think they look good.

Only one more week to go!

Thanks for looking. So in your opinion the air cells look on target for 14 days? I have my fingers crossed for a good hatch and just plan to keep things steady until lockdown.