I am on Day 18 and can't seem to get my humidity higher than 60%. I have a brower top hatch incubator, have filled all the water wells as high as they will go, added 4 soaked sponges (can't fit anything else in the incubator) and even added a humidifier to the room the incubator is in running it on high and shutting the door. The humidity is holding steady at 60% for the last 8 hours . Any suggestions as I don't know what else I can do at this point Am I doomed to have the chicks sticking to the eggs and not hatching? I live in South Dakota, where it is very dry during this time of the year, humidity in the house is 20%(the humidifier in the room with the incubator has raised the room humidity to 30%, but no higher) Z
60 % isn't all that bad, as long as humidity earlier in the cycle wasn't critically low. You do have the option of misting the eggs with warm water once or twice a day if it gets to low. Long before humidity trays in incubators that is what people did and had good hatches.
I found that humidity pads are better at releasing humidity than sponges. Thy are much more porous and really cheap. These are designed for the G.Q F. Sportsman incubators but they can be cut to fit just about any incubator. I got mine from www.cutlersupply.com item # 4502. A test run on my bator indicated 76% relative humidity with these pads. Hope that this helps.
OK--So just for reference, what is the perfect temp and humidity for both days 1-18 and then 18-21? -Theresa
Thanks for the tips. I also got a tip from crazychicken in the chat room about putting a cup filled with water and the sponge sitcking out of the cup (only thought about putting in a soaked sponge ). That, and giving my humidifier a full 24 hours instead of 8, and humidity went up to 65%. But from other posts, I have seen it is best not to raise the humidity until the last two days as opposed to day eighteen, so I am backing off to 50% until tomorrow (Day 20). I thought about putting eggs into an egg carton (from Zunibee's blog) as opposed to letting them sit on the wire mest on the bottom of the incubator. Anyone else try hatching this way? Thanks! Z
I've done it twice now in the egg cartons and had good results. One thing you might use instead of a cup of water with the sponge...I put my sponge laying flat in a butter tub lid and wet it. The lid holds a little water and helps keep the sponge wetter, but there's not a container of water you have to worry about getting spilled or a chick drowning.