I have gotten glued in chicks the last two hatches. The first several hatch out just fine. The last few seem to get stuck in their egg. Almost like they took to long to get out their egg dried out. My temp set at 99.5, I have a forced air with egg turner. My humidity it spot on at 25% the first 18 days, and the 65% until everyone hatches. I cannot figure out what is going wrong.
It could be that 25% is too low during incubation so the eggs are losing too much moisture during incubation. I personally find 45% good for days 1-18. Here's a good article on incubation problems https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/egg-failure-to-hatch-diagnosing-incubation-problems
Do you open the incubator at any stage during the hatch? That can be enough to lower humidity and make the chicks dry out. Otherwise maybe try raising the humidity at hatch by another 5% and see how that goes? I think it's worth experimenting to find out what works best for you, I "dry hatch" now as the humidity here sits around 60% at this time of the year, and that works for me.
x2. I dry hatch now as well, but I push my humidity to at least 70, more comfortable with 75 at hatch time. This allows me to feel confident that if I need to open during hatch I have a little leway with humidity.
Did not open the incubator this hatch. I use the dry hatch method until day 18. I am going to try bumping my humidity up to 70/75 next hatch. Thank you for the impute
Everything seems spot on, though 65% at hatch is a bit low I don't see any big problem with it. I always have a few late hatchers that are slow pipping & zipping and seem to get stuck. I chalk it up to them being the weak underdeveloped chicks. If it's safe and conveinent to open the bator I will "help" rhem because I hate to lose a chick, but I won't jeopardize the rest of the hatch to try to save a weakly chick that usually dies anyway.
