Chickens vs quail incubator temps/humidity, help me figure out why quail hatched and chickens didn't.

[dand883]

So after my first time incubating eggs i had both success and disappointment.

I had 16 quail eggs and 6 chicken eggs from a friend that i was using to test out the incubator. It's a little giant 9200 still air that i added a fan and an stc-1000 temp controller to instead of trying to twist the little knob to try and get the temp to level out and put in an egg turner. Humidity was measured with 1 analog and 2 digital hygrometers that were all within a few % of each other and temps were double checked with 2 thermometers calibrated following the slightly rednecked video on calibrating your incubator.

I had the temp set to 100°F and let it run for a few days to have everything leveled out. I set the chicken eggs in and then 3 days later added in the quail eggs. The first 18 days (15 for the quail) the humidity would start out around 50% and as it evaporated from the trays in the bottom would dip down to about 30% every few days. When it got down around 30% i'd top two of the trays up, which brought it back to 50% and slowly dipped down to 30% again, and repeat as often as necessary.

Once we got to lockdown the humidity was around 75% at the start and as the channels evaporated fell down to about 60% by the time we took out the chicks and moved them to the brooder.

The first quail hatched around noon of day 17 and we had 7 on day 17, 6 on day 18 and the last 3 on day 19. For my first try i would have been happy with a 60% successful hatch rate, so to get 100% is amazing, so i know i at least did something right!

For the chickens, we candled them around day 9 or 10. Two of them didn't look like they were fertilized, there was no veins, no dark spots, nothing. the other 4 all looked good, they all had a dark spot, veins, two even had a bit of movement if you looked close enough. We candled again at lockdown and 1 of the 4 looks like it stopped about half way, still just looked like a bit of a dark spot and veins, similar to the day 9 look, so we tossed it, but the other 3 all looked great as far as i could tell.
The one chicken that did hatch came out on day 21 and i let the incubator run until day 26, but called it then and shut things down. When i broke open the shells both chicks looked fully formed and almost like they would start moving. One shell was kinda runny/liquidy when it opened, the other was slimy like you would expect, but not runny like the first one. Ending up with a 25% success rate, or 16% if you count the first 2 that never even started to develop is a little less amazing than with the quail.

Most of what i see for chicks not hatching when fully developed like that are temps or humidity too high. My controller doesn't have half degrees, so was 100° slightly too high? should i set it for 99° next time? was 75% humidity too high at the start?
The turner only has chicken rails, so the quail eggs sit quite a bit lower, were the chicken eggs too high and warmer/closer to the heating element and got hotter than the quail did? Since the quail did so well, is it just a fluke that the chickens did so poorly?

Any suggestions on what to try next time or anything to improve on?

 

[Kiki]

I think you got lucky.
I think your humidity was too high throughout.

How old were the chicken eggs when you set them?
Do you know what your friend feeds her chickens?

 

[dand883]

I think you got lucky.
I think your humidity was too high throughout.

How old were the chicken eggs when you set them?
Do you know what your friend feeds her chickens?

The eggs were laid the same day they went into the incubator, maybe 12 hours old at most.

Never questioned them specifically on their feed, i just know it's a layer feed from the feed store, plus they free range, so whatever bugs, seeds, etc they scrounge from their yard.

What humidity would you recommend? and do chickens need less/more than quail? There's so much conflicting information when it comes to the humidity.

 

[Kiki]

The eggs were laid the same day they went into the incubator, maybe 12 hours old at most.

Never questioned them specifically on their feed, i just know it's a layer feed from the feed store, plus they free range, so whatever bugs, seeds, etc they scrounge from their yard.

What humidity would you recommend? and do chickens need less/more than quail? There's so much conflicting information when it comes to the humidity.

I would run the bator at 30 to 35 % humidity for both types of eggs and only bump it up to 50ish for hatch day.

You didn't salt test your humidity gauges, correct?

How many thermometers did you have in your bator?
you should have, imo, no less than four calibrated thermometers in your bator so you can see at a (one) glance the temp in four different corners/areas.
It's possible that you have a hot spot that was getting too hot where you have the chicken eggs set too.

 

[dand883]

I would run the bator at 30 to 35 % humidity for both types of eggs and only bump it up to 50ish for hatch day.

You didn't salt test your humidity gauges, correct?

How many thermometers did you have in your bator?
you should have, imo, no less than four calibrated thermometers in your bator so you can see at a (one) glance the temp in four different corners/areas.
It's possible that you have a hot spot that was getting too hot where you have the chicken eggs set too.

I did not salt test the guages, no, but all 3 were within a few % of each other, i was using the average of the 3. Will look into it for next time.
I had 2 thermometers in there, plus the readout of the controller, which matched up with the 2 calibrated thermometers. It's a pretty small area and with the fan going is it necessary to have 4?
To make sure i didn't "have my eggs all in one basket" i spaced the chicken eggs around the incubator and filled in all around them with the quail eggs. They were spaced pretty evenly all around and none were in corners.
Will have to try a lower humidity next time and see how things go.

 

[Kiki]

I use a LG still air incubator.
Yes it is possible to have different temperatures in different spots of the incubator.
I keep 4 - 6 thermometers in my bator at all times.

 

[JaeG]

I have read a bit of a joke on here from older posts where people say you could put quail eggs in a bowl out in the sun and they'd still hatch. Quail are extremely easy to hatch and tolerant of a range of conditions. I've hatched many in my laundry not even thinking about the fact that the washing machine and dryer cause a lot of vibration. Then I was researching the incubation of duck eggs and that was mentioned and I thought "Whoops"!

Chicken eggs aren't as hardy. Late mortality can be caused by vitamin/mineral deficiencies in the parent flock, so that could have been a factor. You do have to experiment a bit to figure out the best settings for your incubator as well. If you do an internet search for "Incubation Troubleshooting" you'll be able to find more factors that might have affected your hatch.

One way to monitor that they are losing sufficient moisture is to weigh them using a gram scale. I weigh them all together and work out the average. I plot that on a simple line graph on day 0 - days go along the bottom from 0-18, weight range you need goes up the side. By day 18 they should have lost around 12% in weight so I subtract 12% from the start weight (there are helpful percentage calculators online if you need them) and plot that on day 18. Draw a straight line between those two points then at any stage of incubation you can re-weigh them and see if they are on track or if you need to adjust your humidity. Using the average means it doesn't matter if you have to remove some eggs because they aren't developing or have stopped.