Living in southern LA its such a hot and humid climate i generally dont add any extra himidity(water for evaporation) until hatch day. Even at that time i dont worry with monitoring humidity too closely, just add water to one of the trays underneath and the hatchers fluffing up automatically adds the extra humidity. If you see the windows are fogging theres too much humidity and u might consider decreasing the amount of water surface. As the goal is creating humidity the water depth doesnt matter as much as the surface area. If youve heard of shrink wrapping chicks thats usually not caused by the incubators humidity as much as the incubator being opened too often. One of the most important things, in my opinion, is not opening the incubator every 5 mins. It cant hold temp or humidity properly if its opened abunch. Ive even gone as far as to have a Dry jatvh without adding qny water for humidity Even at hatch time. Your eggs will tell you what you need.
temp is really the main concern, as long as the aircells inside the eggs are monitored. Monitoring the air cells by candling is a great way to listen to your eggs needs. If the humidity is too low the pocket will be too big and if its too high the pocket will be too low. There are lots of great pics depicting average expectations. Quail eggs will be really hard to see into w their thick shells and theyll be hard to monitor so i recommend you pick just a few to monitor air cells from the batch all spread out and get a Super bright pen light.
Temp is alot more important. The temp should be between 99 and 101 at about 1/3 of the way down the egg. The higher end of that range will hatch chicks faster but thats not necessarily better and if its over that range for too long it can fry your eggs or at least hatch them too early with defects. Same deal w too low temps w the exception the chicks then come too late.
Dont despair if it seems like too much info! people held my hands my first times as i monitored the water lose by the weight of each egg lol. Ill stick around and yoy can keep me updated here right?
