First Hatch! Due January 18th. -- Pics of Candled eggs!

[hcammack]

Quote:
Whoot! I am so glad you are hatching faverolles to

 

[JCoogle]

Good luck to all and a little warning to all of the first time hatchers, incubating is very additive. I have just hatched out four of my first eggs out of my homemade incubator and hatcher. I am now in the process of drawing up my plans on an incubator that will hold a little over 150 eggs and a hatcher that I can turn out atleast 50 at a time.

 

[hcammack]

Quote:
Im already starting to figure that out

 

[thechickonthehill]

This is sooo frustrating. My incubator temps have been staying where they need to be just fine; however, due to this cold snap I guess, my humidity has been steadily dropping. It dropped to 29.7% yesterday. After doing some research on BYC I tried a few things to help raise the humidity somewhat - put sponges and water in my shallow tray that's in the bottom of the incubator and also added a couple of pint jars of water. After doing that yesterday evening, my humidity did go up to 31.9%, but my temp dropped down to 96.8! It had finally crawled back up to 98.2 by the time I went to bed and was still there this morning. I went ahead and put in a 40 watt bulb to replace the 25 watt that was in there (about an hour ago) and so far the temp is only up to 98.4 (of course it dropped when I changed bulbs so I lost ground there). I thought the jars of water were supposed to help hold a more steady temp? I sure wish I had a broody right about now! Hopefully, I will get the temp up and stabilized again soon. I may pull the jars of water since I was doing fine with the temp before I put them in.

Any suggestions from those with more experience would be appreciated.

 

[thechickonthehill]

Okay, so things are much better in the temperature department now. I stumbled across some info on another thread that really helped to minimize the swing on my thermostat. Prior to my attempts to raise the humidity yesterday, I had been able to keep my temps ranging from a low of 99 to a high of 101. Now I have it at a low of 99.1 and a high of 99.9 - I like that average much better. I have a hardware cloth divider placed between my eggs and the light bulb/thermostat/fan end of the incubator to keep chicks from frying themselves. I simply took the divider out and wrapped it in aluminum foil to keep the fan from blowing directly onto the eggs. Evidently this makes the thermostat much happier and more responsive. My humidity is staying around 31% so it really didn't help with that, but as long as it doesn't drop any lower, I'm not bothering it. I've decided to take my vet up on his offer to let me borrow his "store bought" incubator. I'll just get it set up before time for lockdown with the correct temp and higher hatching humidity and transfer the eggs over on the evening of day 18 to hatch out. Then I can start playing with my homemade incubator without hurting my hatch in progress.

I think part of my humidity problem is that I have too much air moving in the incubator and I need to slow my fan speed down.
"Sigh . . ." incubating is a lot of work, but I am learning a lot!

 

[Kerjack]

So I ran in and out of the room with my incubator real quickly this morning, and something defiantly reeks in there. When I get home I'll have to see if I can find the smelly egg. This doesn't look to hopeful lol, oh well it's my first time.

 

[pinkchick]

Happy Hatching Everyone!!!!!!!

 

[Kerjack]

Hi Buddies! Glad everything is just rolling along.

I decided to try candling again today with my new homemade candler, she's a beaut

. And I am still very confused by what I found. But! I did take some pics so I'd love some opinions on whats going on.

Btw this is day 11

#1

#2 - This one was wierd. When I moved the egg the dark blob would follow. So If I turned the egg upside down then it would follow, maybe no air pockets? Iunno.

#3

#4

#5 - This one had a dark spot within the darkess, iunno about that either.

#6

#7 - Same as #5

#8