Best way to raise humidity? Urgent!

[nao57]

You know I wonder if it'd work to have a humidifier (like for people with colds) next to the incubator in a closed door small room, in a basement. Then the egg incubator is getting airflow intake from that room.

That's the best I can come up with after thinking about this since last night when this was posted; for people without the other normal humidifier settings on homemade incubators, etc.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

X2
I agree that a humidifier in a closet with the incubator would help a lot.
I also agree that a Little Giant incubator is no match for a cool basement. I was able to hatch a few in my basement in a LG but it was far from ideal and the wide temperature swings severely affected hatchability.
I even built a huge cabinet/hatcher combo with several heat elements ranging from 125watt to 250 watt and I found the ambient cool temperature made the thing work too hard. The heat element is only40 watts in a LG.
I now incubate in an unused upstairs bedroom in two old sportsman incubators and a sportsman hatcher. I still want to move incubation back to the basement but not until I can install a small gas space heater in a room down there so I can raise the temperature in that room to 80F or above so the incubators won't have to work so hard. I think that will improve success dramatically.

 

[GermanKennhuhn]

X2
I agree that a humidifier in a closet with the incubator would help a lot.
I also agree that a Little Giant incubator is no match for a cool basement. I was able to hatch a few in my basement in a LG but it was far from ideal and the wide temperature swings severely affected hatchability.
I even built a huge cabinet/hatcher combo with several heat elements ranging from 125watt to 250 watt and I found the ambient cool temperature made the thing work too hard. The heat element is only40 watts in a LG.
I now incubate in an unused upstairs bedroom in two old sportsman incubators and a sportsman hatcher. I still want to move incubation back to the basement but not until I can install a small gas space heater in a room down there so I can raise the temperature in that room to 80F or above so the incubators won't have to work so hard. I think that will improve success dramatically.

Unfortunately I don’t have a humidifier I can use, but I’m starting to think the hygrometer’s inaccurate because 2 more chicks hatched without a problem. Unfortunately they had unhealed navels as well, so I put neosporin on them when I removed them from the incubator. The room hygrometer reads 40%, so I don’t see how the incubator could be 18% with all the water trays full plus the bowl of water

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I never met a hygrometer I trusted. Therefor I always weigh eggs prior to setting and then a couple times during incubation to insure that weight loss is progressing apace.

 

[GermanKennhuhn]

I never met a hygrometer I trusted. Therefor I always weigh eggs prior to setting and then a couple times during incubation to insure that weight loss is progressing apace.

I might try that with the next batch I set. Thank you very much for your help! This is only my 3rd time incubating, and 2 of those times were in the LG, before I got the Hova-bator

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I've had 2 LGs. Both free. The first an old friend gave me a barely usable one which I had to refurbish. Then the college bought one for me to use in my classes. I call them embryo executioners. They killed more eggs than they hatched.
I started building my own cabinet hatcher combo which I used to incubate lots of birds in and even some for a Slow Foods program. It seemed like I was always making modifications to it. Then an old friend offered to sell me some ancient Sportsmen cheap. Two work well but one doesn't heat. The fan and turner works. I'm about to go through it and bring it up to speed.
To use weight, the eggs need to average 13% loss during the entire incubation.
https://poultrykeeper.com/incubating-and-hatching-eggs/weight-loss-method-forl-incubation/
I mostly use a pocket digital gram scale to weigh individual eggs and then I recently bought a larger very accurate scale so I can weigh whole trays of eggs as well as grown birds.

 

[GermanKennhuhn]

Unfortunately 3 chicks died, one after pipping, and two after internally pipping(I made safety holes bc they didn't externally pip for 6/7 hours, and I was worried they'd run out of air)I know LG's are poor quality incubators, but what about them specifically causes hatches like this? Fluctuating temperatures?It"s day 22, and we have at least 10 more eggs in the bator, at least one more internal pip, and one that we started to help out because it appeared to be stuck after making no progress in 24hours. I think vein bust earlier, because there's some blood on the membrane, but not many vessels. Unfortunately the most of the shell was picked off before I saw it. Should I help it out?It's trying to get out and cheeping.The temps did run low(94-97) for a day or two, but the other four's hatch date didn't seem to be affected by the low temps

 

[GermanKennhuhn]

Also, what incubators do you guys recommend? Preferably large enough to hold 40+ chicken eggs.

 

[nao57]

Wow that's a lot of chickens. A 60% hatch rate on 40 would be fun to see a picture of.

I saw a candling pic that looked like 2 hearts...is that possible or maybe I am misinterpreting it?

 

[GermanKennhuhn]

The chick is now mostly out of the shell and there doesn’t appear to be much more blood/veining, but it keeps its head under its wing(like it is in the shell) and doesn’t walk around. It’s alert, and cheeps, so I think I’m going to leave it in the incubator for another day or two and see what happens. Any advice?