Advice with incubator

[tinkestral]

Hi all , had chickens for many years but incubating eggs for the first time is proving stressfull .
The eggs are on day 21 and three are pipping , the rest are moving too. But the three that have made holes and chirping have not made much progress since last night . My husband suspects the humidity may be wrong , he has been spraying lighting warm water on the eggs. He is stressed to the max advice please

 

[spikennipper]

You should really have a humidity dial in there to read humidity rather than guessing, opening up the incubator to spray will just be letting more humidity out so please do not do this, it is better to place a damp wash cloth inside to bump the humidity and leave the incubator shut but this should be done before the eggs pip, you can do this now quickly but then please leave the incubator closed and wait for the chicks to hatch, if they pip and do not hatch within 24 hours then something may be wrong but I would give them 24 hours at least.

 

[casportpony]

Raise the humidity, they're probably getting shrink-wrapped.

-Kathy

 

[Wyandottes7]

Raise the humidity, they're probably getting shrink-wrapped.

-Kathy

X2.

 

[BantamLover21]

X2.

X3 But don't drown them either.

 

[casportpony]

Once pipped internally and peeping, they should pip externally in 24 hours. If they don't, I candle the egg and try to find their beak and place a small hole there. Then I put them back in the incubator with the humidity set to max. If no progress is made in 12 hours, I peel away a little of the shell to see what's going on. If I find blood, I stop, and put it back in the incubator, wait a few more hours and try again.

This is a peachick that had pipped internally, but couldn't pip externally because it was shrink wrapped.

This is the whole I made.


Here you can see how dry the membrane is at the bottom of the picture.


Here it is after I moistened it with small amount of warm, distilled water.








-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

This is a severly shrink wrapped chick, it died in the shell.


-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

X3 But don't drown them either.

I don't think that's possible... I just hatched two peachicks with the humidity set to 70% but my back up reader read 85%,

-Kathy

 

[tinkestral]

Well there is definately a problem with humidity , off the two pipping chicks yesterday one has died the other is Ali e only because of the advice on here. Just need to raise the humidity more but how

 

[casportpony]

Bowls of warm water, Warm wet towels. More surface area is the way..

-Kathy