Egg weighing problem

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Hopefully some of your silkie hens will help out and go broody for you. That doesn't eliminate the issues with shipped eggs, but most hens do a much better job than an incubator- is there any reason you're not keeping some of the hatched chicks for breeding stock and using their eggs?
I am keeping all of the chicks so far because this is my first year with them and a half egg layers but I had recently hatched some silkies and fell in love with them so now I'm doing nothing but silkies so my oldest silkies are 11 weeks old and then I have about a hundred silky eggs and my incubators lol!I just love silkies that's the reason I'm doing nothing but silkies but I can't wait until next year when they're big enough to go broody!!!!
 
I haven't experienced that before and I've incubated quail at 75% humidity for the entire duration of incubation (I kept adding eggs so ended up in permanent lockdown with eggs hatching all the time:oops:). It was more humid outside the incubator than in it at the time and they were my own eggs so I assume the eggs were set up for those conditions.

What temperature are you incubating at? I'd be inclined to set it a little higher if that is happening because that will help the egg to lose more moisture. My incubator is forced air but I set it to 100-101 as that's what's worked well for me. The chicken eggs I've incubated recently have only just lost the minimum amount of weight during incubation and that was with my humidity at 27-30%. I don't think they would have lost enough if my temperature had been set to 99.5. One factor I've read is that when the humidity is low it doesn't conduct heat as well as when it is set at a higher level.

I also found this passage that explains more:
Air relative humidity (RH) also influences evaporative
egg heat loss, and consequently, embryonic or fetal
temperature (Decuypere et al., 2002; Molenaar et
al., 2010). As the amount of energy required to
evaporate water is 2.26kJ, eggs lose 2.26kJ energy as
heat per gram of evaporated water. Thus, the lower
is the relative humidity inside the setter room, the
greater is the loss of water by the egg and, therefore,
its heat loss. This indicates that eggs incubated at
low or high RH conditions may require different
incubation temperatures to maintain the same
embryo temperature (van der Pol et al., 2013), as both
incubation relative humidity and temperature affect
water vapor diffusion through the eggshell.


How are you positioning your eggs for hatch? If laying flat you should have the low dip of the air cell facing up as that is where they will pip and that should keep any residual moisture away from the chick. You could try hatching them upright as that will also allow excess moisture to drain away from the chicks head. If you are incubating the eggs upright they need to be turned to at least a 45 degree angle back and forth.

Cutchin H.R. et al (2009) showed that an angle of turning of 15° (relative to the vertical) leads to embryonic mortality in the second part of incubation 10 times greater than when eggs are turned at an angle of 45°. In the same study, it was also found that the incidence of embryos showing excess residual albumen at 18 days of incubation, increased to nearly 20 times. Both hatch and intermediate embryonic mortality was observed when eggs were turned at an angle of 30°.

Do you turn your eggs right from the beginning of incubation? A lot of people leave shipped eggs a few days to settle and start turning after 3-5 days. I turn mine right from the start whatever their air cells are like because I've learned it is essential for the development of the extra embryonic membranes. This article explains it very well and stresses the importance of egg turning right from the start:
https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/the-biology-behind-egg-turning

In my last batch one egg had a rolling air cell but I still set it on its side like all the rest and turned it the same as them. It settled in the fat end but was always particularly large and uneven looking, so I didn't get my hopes up on that one. They were blue green eggs so after a certain point I couldn't see into most of them to candle, and this was one of those eggs. But it hatched out just fine.

Incubation really is an art that varies so widely between each persons individual setting/micro-climate. Once you figure out what works for you in your incubator in your environment, it will get much easier.
I hatch them setting up right in an egg carton because of their air cell issues from being shipped..and because most of the time the air cells are loose or detached I do not turn them at all for the first 5 days sometimes for 7 days and just depends on how the air cells look after the 5 days. And I keep the temperature at 100 but with my incubator even though it's set at 100 it's still only 99.5 so what would you suggest raising it to? That's a really good idea and I'm never really thought of that but that makes sense!
 
How many eggs did you set in the Brinsea?
I only ask because its took me three years and ten hatches to really understand how my cosmo evo 72 works.
Because its such a large incubator if i set between a dozen and twenty then i struggle stabilising both humidity and temp BUT if i set 40 plus then filling two wells with water gets me a stable 38% humidity that stays completely constant, temp is also constant with hardly any fluctuations, if the incy is empty then i also struggle to raise the humidity to anywhere near 60% even with all eight wells full of water, the added bonus is when its full its spikes nicely when they start hatching.
Basically my incy holds 72 and likes to be full, it hates it being empty because of all the extra space.
My best hatches are when ive set 50 plus eggs.
I have 56 and brinsia it is totally packed to the max 🤣 I'll do it dry and the humidity runs 40 to 42 with no water at all
 

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