I live in SE Michigan. Generally we have humidities in the 40-50 % range during the daytime, but of course, that's the average, it can be as low as the 20's, but this is rare, or foggy and wet all the time.
I have lowered the humidity when I did quail, and got a lot better hatches.
Brinsea recommends about 45% then 65% at lockdown, I went with around 37% and 52 to 57%, and didn't have problems with late dead in shell. OTOH, this last hatch was ALSO my first of my own eggs, not shipped in eggs, and that makes a difference. Can't really draw a valid conclusion since I changed more than one variable.
BUT, I tried running my goose eggs drier, also, at 40% then 60 to 65% to hatch, and that was NOT good -- they had problems with getting shrink wrapped and had a lot of "goo" stuck to them. It was too dry, am upping it for the current 3 goose eggs back to 48% incubation, and will start out at about 67% to hatch.
We are putting the first eggs in on thursday night or friday morning. But I'm not sure whether to do the full dry hatch that I've read about having great results or keep the humidity up. It seems to be one extreme or the other. What if we just put a little water in, but not do a complete dry hatch? And if we do that, what do you think the humidity should be?
