First time incubating questions

[motherhen2389]

I think I've searched enough and have had most of my questions answered but here is another might seem silly sorry in advance.
I have a miller electronic circulated air incubator and a 41 egg turner, I plan on filling the whole 41 eggs but my question is how do you remove the turner at Day 18? Do you pull all the eggs out onto a towel or something and then take the turner out and then place the eggs back in? Won't the eggs loose too much heat? I am thinking it might take a bit to unload 41 eggs, then the turner then replace the eggs. Any and all advise MUCH appreciated!! Thank you

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Yes, you remove the eggs then the turner then put the eggs back. No, the eggs wont lose much heat. They are a solid mass, the incubator will lose heat as it's just air but that warms back up quickly and your eggs will be fine.

By your last candling of eggs, before or during taking them out of turner, there will be quitters or if you didn't candle prior to take out will be a few that never started to develop. That initial 41 eggs will not be the same amount that is in the incubator at hatch time. There will be plenty of room with what is left to lay the eggs flat on sides with room for chicks to hatch out.

Day 18 or early day 19 is when you pull from turner and up your humidity to 70%+. I like to incubate at 30% RH, you'll find it doesn't take much surface area to achieve that. In our area it's a double shot glass to coffee cup of water wedged beside turner and incubator wall. That's not a lot of surface area at all. It may take all your water wells to bring it up to 70% RH for hatch time. It's something you can play with to know before you set the eggs and are getting the incubator temp steady.

I looked up your incubator. I strongly recommend you purchase an inexpensive hygrometer/thermometer to verify your incubator readings. Don't trust it's temperature and especially the humidity gauge to be accurate. Walmart sells Acurite combo units for around $7. It will give another temp to verify what the incubator is reading. They are also small enough to easily calibrate the hygrometer so you are reading true RH not what the incubator reads. Hygrometers can be off by a lot, search "salt test" to see how easy it is to calibrate and you wont regret it. Once the small hygrometer unit is calibrated it can be used to calibrate your incubator.

 

[motherhen2389]

Yes I have an aditional hygrometer/thermometer and the temps are very different from the bator. We have about 46% humidity in the room already so I won't need to add much water. I have set up the incubator yesterday and I'm setting eggs on Tuesday or wednesday

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Room humidity will be different than the humidity in the incubator. Humidity is relative to temperature, your incubator is 99.5F which is a good 30 degrees hotter than your room temp. The humidity in incubator will be much lower than room until surface area of water is added.

 

[motherhen2389]

Yes I just wanted to test the air humidity first, then I put the hygrometer inside the bator and you're right it dropped way down. I added water and am not going to touch it for 24hours and see where it's at, I've been recording the temp every hour or so so I can see if I need to adjust at all tonorrow