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That's interesting. I keep reading people on here swearing by dry incubating. I wonder if perhaps they live in a humid area. With no added water I have around 30-35% humidity. I had awful hatch rates. I've bumped it up and I think it helps. But I'm new at this and don't really know.
It's very frustrating to have half the people advising dry hatch and others advising high humidity. My 4H leader advised us to keep the humidity high the whole time. He hatches a lot of birds. I wish I knew who to believe, lol.
Ideal humidity isn't something that's as set in stone as ideal temperature. There simply IS no one ideal figure that will suit everybody. You just have to experiment with your bator and figure out what works well for you and your eggs. The best way I've found to figure out ideal humidity without tons of trial-and-error awful hatches is to weigh the eggs through the incubation.
Eggs lose moisture gradually while they're incubating, that's why the air cells get bigger. The ideal amount of moisture for them to lose is 11-15%. Weigh the eggs before you set them, then weigh them when candling, say on days 7 and 14. If they're losing too much or too little, you simply adjust the humidity up or down a bit. After a couple of hatches, you'll probably have a much better idea of what your ideal humidity range is.
Some people seem to get great results dry hatching in still air bators. I think that without a fan, the moisture evaporating from the eggs just kinda hangs around in the bator, meaning that it stays humid in there without you having to add any water, even in fairly dry climates.
That's interesting. I keep reading people on here swearing by dry incubating. I wonder if perhaps they live in a humid area. With no added water I have around 30-35% humidity. I had awful hatch rates. I've bumped it up and I think it helps. But I'm new at this and don't really know.
It's very frustrating to have half the people advising dry hatch and others advising high humidity. My 4H leader advised us to keep the humidity high the whole time. He hatches a lot of birds. I wish I knew who to believe, lol.
Ideal humidity isn't something that's as set in stone as ideal temperature. There simply IS no one ideal figure that will suit everybody. You just have to experiment with your bator and figure out what works well for you and your eggs. The best way I've found to figure out ideal humidity without tons of trial-and-error awful hatches is to weigh the eggs through the incubation.
Eggs lose moisture gradually while they're incubating, that's why the air cells get bigger. The ideal amount of moisture for them to lose is 11-15%. Weigh the eggs before you set them, then weigh them when candling, say on days 7 and 14. If they're losing too much or too little, you simply adjust the humidity up or down a bit. After a couple of hatches, you'll probably have a much better idea of what your ideal humidity range is.
Some people seem to get great results dry hatching in still air bators. I think that without a fan, the moisture evaporating from the eggs just kinda hangs around in the bator, meaning that it stays humid in there without you having to add any water, even in fairly dry climates.
