Any one good at hatching eggs ?

[Wigggy]

Hello im from victoria australia and are 15 and im trying to hatch eggs and are wanting to know wether any one has had the problem the im having now of that i have only have one channel filled in my incubator and its still up at 60 % humidity and the stupid people who made it put an alarm on so at 45% humidity an alarm sounds so i carnt do dry method any idea or sugestions would love to learn the ways of the more experienced
:/

 

[Wigggy]

Can any one help ?

 

[cochins1088]

Can you decrease the surface area of the tray? Whats the humidity outside of the incubator? If you need some water in order to be above 45%, try making the surface area smaller. You mention that you fill a channel, can you use something to keep the water in only half of the channel? That would create half the surface area so half the evaporation which would lead to a lower humidity. All you can do is play with surface area to get humidity that is just above 45%. I don't know how your incubator is set up, but if you can't section off a channel, maybe you can place an small container of water with the eggs that has a smaller surface area than the channel. Good Luck!

 

[JACKO]

Idont know what brand of incubator you have,but i have a brinsea 20 advanced, if you fill the chanel to half full you will get excessive humidity, my brinsea has two chanels and at the start of incubation i only fill one to about half a centimetre, initialy it will show high then it will settle to around 45 try to keep it to that level, on the last 4 days half fill the chanel to reach around 60,
but remember you live in a very hot climate keep the incubator in a cool place where the temperature is stable.
If you have a brinsea they can supply an auto humidifier that you fit to your machine then humidity is controled automaticaly.

i live in the UK in a small town called Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria.
Hope this helps you, the very best of luck to you, Jacko

 

[dolly85]

You could drain the water from the channel and use a smaller container set inside to decrease the surface area which will ultimately decrease the humidity.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It could help to know what type of incubator you have. It's quite possible in Australia it's one I've never heard of.

Humidity can be rough. Different humidities work for different ones of us. You'd think that inside the incubator conditions woulde be the same for all of us but that just ain't so. Some of us have forced air and some still air. Living at different elevations means different air pressure which can make a difference in what humidity we need. We have different background humidities at different seasons. I can get a 15% difference in humidity inside the incubator doing exactly the same thing but with different background humidities in spring versus summer.

Don't get frustrated. You don't have to hit humidity dead on. As long as you are close you will probably do OK. For me, 60% does seem high and I'd try to get it down like you want to do.

Other than backgroud humidity, the humidity is controlled by surface area of the water. This is for those that have reservoirs in them where you depend on evaporation. There are some that handle it differently. I don't know about them. Mine is a Hovabator 1588 and has 5 different reservoirs in it. Different reservoirs are different sizes. I control humidity in two ways.

One is pretty obvious. I fill different reservoirs. That's the easier one.

Remember that surface area is what counts. If you need to increase your humidity, if you add a wick to the reservoir, like a wash cloth, the water will wick out of the reservoir and you'll have a bigger area for it to evaporate. But that's not what you want to do. Try covering part of the reservoir with aluminum foil (Probably aluminium to you). You can use something else as long as it does not absorb the water. Or float something in it that does not absorb the water but will reduce the surface area.

It sounds like you are just starting. Don't freak out. You have plenty of time to get it right though a good time to start is now. What counts in incubation is the average humidity over the life of the process. Over 18 days the chicken egg needs to lose a certain amount of moisture. Until you go into lockdown and the eggs start to pip, it does not really matter if the instantaneous humidity is 70% or 15% as long as the average is pretty close to what you want.

Good luck!

 

[Wigggy]

The type as on the box is a "egg incubator type BL-E148" and i currently have the humidity at 55% as it drops at night i have put the incubator under the house because its the most stable location but still are struggling to get it lower :/ i think the incubator came from the uk
Ive only done one hatch before and the humidity was what killed me out of 14 i got 4 to hatch and even then one was a deformed chick so it got the shovel

 

[satay]

I don't know of that kind of incubator but i would do as others say and add little to no water for the first 18 days, Where i live here in qld it is very humid most of the time so i never have water in mine til day 18. I then up the humidity to 65% for hatch.