am i ready?

[showjumper_girl2002]

Ok I have my bator at 99.5 degrees and humidity at 55%. I'm I ready to put my chicken eggs in?

 

[pete55]

Hi

Yes it sounds OK to me

Dont forget the temperature may fluctuate a little when the eggs go in but leave well alone and it'll settle down again. Your humidity seems OK but its alaways good practice to weigh your eggs before starting incubation and record that so you know if they're losing the right amount of moisture to achieve a good hatch (15% weight loss).

Best of luck.

Pete

 

[jenlynn4]

sounds like your ready to me!

 

[ginbart]

I would say 55% would be to high for me. But that's just me, I would go up to 50 for the first 18 days then between 50 and 70 for the last. Good luck.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How do you plan to raise the humidity for lockdown? Have you tested your planned method to do that yet?

Don't overstress on the humidity percentage yet. Pete55's idea of weighing them to determine moisture loss is pretty good, but you need to weight enough to get an average. Don't just weight one and call that good for all of them. You need a really good scale for that and it is easier to get an accurate weight if you weigh a bunch together. Some people look at the growth of the air sac to see if the humidity is about right.

Different humidities work for different ones of us. If you weigh them, you can adjust as you go along. If you don't weigh them or check air sac growth, I suggest you pick a humidity and try to be fairly consistent throughout the hatch. When it is over analyze the eggs that did not hatch to try to determine if you need to adjust the humidity.

Good luck!

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

Thanks everyone! I put the humidity at 55 because I read so many different ideas from 50% to 65% and just tried to get it in the middle. As far as looking at the air sac to determine if humidity is good what would it look like if the humidity is too high or low?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Their is a sketch at the bottom of this link.

http://www.small-farm-permaculture-and-sustainable-living.com/egg_candling.html

 

[showjumper_girl2002]

Great! Thanks!