Forced air incubator keeps high humidity.

[Sublight]

Should I worry? I cant keep the humidity right. It stays high no matter how I set the water. I put less in and today yhe humidity reached 35% so I added water. now it's at 70% and will probably reach 80+.

I know low humidity is bad, how bad is high humidity?

 

[MarkJr]

From what I’ve gathered, high humidity won’t let air cell develop enough. This doesn’t let chick internally pip and have enough room to breathe.

On some advice gotten here, I’m incubating dry. Only going to add water if it drops under 20%

May I ask where you are getting your humidity measurements from? My incubator varies 15-25% off from displayed compared to my calibrated hygrometer

 

[R2elk]

Should I worry? I cant keep the humidity right. It stays high no matter how I set the water. I put less in and today the humidity reached 35% so I added water. now it's at 70% and will probably reach 80+.

I know low humidity is bad, how bad is high humidity?

Are you checking the humidity with a salt calibrated hygrometer?

Humidity is directly related to the surface area of the water. When you increase the surface area the humidity will go up. When you decrease the surface area, the humidity will go down.

Determine (trial and error) the right amount of surface area to produce the humidity that you desire. Find or devise a container that has that much surface area but is also deeper. By having a deeper container, you will have a bigger reserve to maintain the desired humidity for a longer period of time between fillings.

Low humidity during the lockdown phase is bad. High humidity during the incubation phase is even worse.

 

[Tonyroo]

Use your vents if you have it on your incubator to control the high humidity.

 

[BrinseaUS]

If you're incubating chicken eggs, 35% humidity is better than 70%. At 35% the air cell may develop a little too much, but that is better than high humidity at 70% where the air cell won't develop hardly at all and it will drown the chick.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I really don't get the constant fretting over humidity. It isn't a set number and what is needed will vary from one line of eggs to another. In nature, humidity constantly changes.
I have hens on eggs now and it was 75% humidity this morning. A few days ago it was 35%. Tomorrow it will rain and humidity will be well over 90%.
A much more accurate and simpler thing is to determine correct humidity by weight.
A simple pocket gram scale to determine weight loss will obviate the need for checking humidity.
Chicken eggs need to lose 13% of their weight during incubation. If they are losing more than 0.6% weight per day, humidity is too low. If they are losing less than that, humidity is too high.
I weigh when I set, put a little water in and after a week I weigh to see if I need to raise or lower humidity. I weigh again at two weeks. Then by day 19 I raise humidity.