Can I raise the humidity in my "dry" incubator for a few days? or

flood

In the Brooder
7 Years
Aug 24, 2012
83
1
41
Oklahoma
I am so glad I finally figured out my login info again. I need a bit of help. I am incubating eggs using the "cheat sheet" that was posted somewhere here. So it is dry, the eggs have set for 1 week. A couple of days into it one of my ducks abandoned her nest. They are to hatch the 1st. I added them to the incubator. I candled them all today and now two of the five have already internally pipped and I haven't gotten the other incubator to settle yet. What do I do? I figure if I give the hatching bator attention every couple of hours I may be able to work out these details while they are hatching without opening anything. I thought it was doing well. I've had it running for 2 days in anticipation of coming lock down and it was at 99. This AM it was at 104. I think the closet got too warm so I've opened the door. I'm trying to keep the house at 75. Everytime the temp in the house drops more then 3 degrees we loose a degree on the bators that are in the closet. It bugs me. There is no heat vent in the closet.

Would it be better to leave them where they are, raise the humidity and turn off the turner? Since they've internally pipped maybe they only have two days?

Thanks for the help.
Lorie
 
oh well, one is externally pipping now. It is 4 days early and I'm off guard and not ready. I have moved them to the hatching bator, the humidity is at 73, the temp currently 91 because I opened it to get rid of the 104. The closet is at 90, the other bator is holding steady at 99.5-100. We'll just see what happens and I'll do my best to stay there as much of the day as possible.
 
I thought I would update a little in case you are curious. The one egg that I thought had externally pipped had cracked the shell without breaking the membrane. I brought in a hen to sit on them for me so I could sleep since I no longer trust the incubator. She was sleeping too so I don't feel cruel for making her sleep in a bucket. The piece of shell was somewhat off this morning and I could see that the membrane is still intact it looks okay so far. I could hear the peepers all night. I kept the eggs on the damp paper towel since I know that her skin is not exposed so the humidity would be too low. It was still somewhat damp this morning. The eggs were warm. Another has pipped the shell just like the first in the time since I returned them to the bator. I know I am doing this all wrong and I didn't plan on doing it this way.

This is my second hatch. My first were bantams. I got two out of 5. I never eggtopsied but that was an interesting thread. I read this forum for many hours yesterday and came to the conclusion that I never should have allowed Tabitha to sit on her own eggs. She is my smallest duck and the drakes are huge in comparison. These babies are probably too large to hatch correctly. This is her second hatch too. The first eggs kept disapearing. (snake) I took the last two, out of 11, and drove them to a broody hen. She hatched one. The other wasn't fertile. That duck at 9 weeks is much larger than her mama. It hatched so maybe these will too but I will switch out her eggs for another if I ever choose to allow her to set again. I am pretty sure she abandoned her nest this time because I removed her companions including the drake. He likes to kill babies and will beeline across the yard if he even hears one. She lasted two days in seperation and then stood at the gate and hollered for hours and would not return to the nest.

If you got this far: I would still like to know if I could have raised the humidity in the first bator and not damage the hatch for the other eggs. If possible, that would have been ideal.
 
welcome-byc.gif
I think that is going to be awful high humidity, your other chicks could be born sticky, I'm not saying not to do it, because you have not choose, if it is only for a days you should be alright, I would remove the hatchlings as soon as they are hatched and lower humidity to about 45%. Good luck
fl.gif

Let me know how it goes.
 
Thank you for your reply. I was beginning to feel lonely! I think it may have helped to leave them and raise the humidity but I didn't know if it was safe. I will keep reading and possibly come across someone who has done it successfully. I didn't want to jepardize the safety of 23 for the sake of 5.

4 eggs pipped internally, two externally.One egg that didn't pip internally is still sitting there.The others quit moving. I ended up helping the two when they didn't zip after many hours. They are doing well. I took photos to show here to see if they were too big and other things. I do not know the rules about photo hosting and this site though. I may start a new thread about that.
 

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