Different sized air cells in same incubator.

[DogIsMyShepherd]

So I had put 10 barred rock(rooster) by Rhode Island Red(hen) eggs in my incubator. All 10 were fertile but at day 10 one had quit, day 15 one had quit. So I’m down to 8 eggs. Tomorrow is day 18, 4 eggs have great looking air cells and the other 4 have air cells that look a little too small, like they would look at day 14. What should I do? I’ve been doing a dry hatch I haven’t added any water. My humidity has been 25-35%. Last week it was very hot for 3 days in a row and my humidity went up to 40% on those days, don’t know if that’s what caused this. If I add a bit of rice to the incubator would that help or would that dry out the 4 eggs with the good size air cells?

 

[WVduckchick]

Nah, rice won’t help. At day 18, you should increase the humidity anyway. It’s kinda late to try to increase the size of the air cells now. You can wait till day 19 to increase the humidity, if you don’t have any internal pips by then, just to give them one more day.

In the future, if the air cells are too small, you can sometimes wipe the eggs with a barely-dampened sponge and wipe off some of the bloom on the egg, and this will allow a little more rapid moisture loss, but it needs to be done around day 12-17 to have much effect.

Hopefully they all hatch just fine! Good luck!

 

[DogIsMyShepherd]

Nah, rice won’t help. At day 18, you should increase the humidity anyway. It’s kinda late to try to increase the size of the air cells now. You can wait till day 19 to increase the humidity, if you don’t have any internal pips by then, just to give them one more day.

In the future, if the air cells are too small, you can sometimes wipe the eggs with a barely-dampened sponge and wipe off some of the bloom on the egg, and this will allow a little more rapid moisture loss, but it needs to be done around day 12-17 to have much effect.

Hopefully they all hatch just fine! Good luck!

Ok I’ll hope for the best. Thank you

 

[DogIsMyShepherd]

Why would some have good sized air cells and others not? Is it just depending on the thickness of the shell?