Getting Frequent Humidity Drops

[iamfivewire]

Sett some eggs last eve in a farm innovations 4200 styrofoam incubator . Had it set around 35% humidity. Added 3 MLs water at 730, 2 at 930, 2.5 at 1030, & another 6 at 730 am , because it keeps dropping to around 24% . Wil this eventually "level off" at some point (soon i hope)? Plus, dont want to overfill too much water, & cant always be home to monitor every couple hours either .
Help!

 

[A roo or two]

Sett some eggs last eve in a farm innovations 4200 styrofoam incubator . Had it set around 35% humidity. Added 3 MLs water at 730, 2 at 930, 2.5 at 1030, & another 6 at 730 am , because it keeps dropping to around 24% . Wil this eventually "level off" at some point (soon i hope)? Plus, dont want to overfill too much water, & cant always be home to monitor every couple hours either .
Help!

mine did. I am dry hatching, so little to no water (when I say little I used a syringe and literally "dripped" water in). Once the eggs sat a few days the humidity slowly went up with fluctuations of 2 maybe 3% a day. Are you in a dry climate or have a heat source running that keeps your house dry? If the humidity in the room you place your bator in is around 50% your incubator should level off around 30/32, at least mine did, without any water at all.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know that specific incubator or how it controls humidity. I can give you generic information, not incubator specific information. If yours doesn’t work with reservoirs, call the manufacturer and talk to them unless someone with specific knowledge of that incubator shows up. You might edit your title to mention your specific incubator to attract the attention of people that know it.

The way you control humidity in most incubators is surface area. The more surface area for water to evaporate from the higher the humidity. Depth of water in the reservoir doesn’t affect humidity, just when you run out of water.

If you have too much humidity (I know, not your problem today) reduce surface area, either by removing a reservoir or not filling one or cover part of one with foil. If you remove water or spill some, it may take a while for the humidity to stabilize. It has to dry up that additional surface area.

To increase humidity, add water to another reservoir or put a container of water in there. You can put a sponge or cloth in a reservoir so it wicks out moisture and gives more surface area for the water to evaporate from. Of course, this means the water in that reservoir runs out faster so you have to watch that.

The instantaneous humidity n the incubator is not that important. What counts is the average humidity over the entire incubation. As long as they don’t last really long, spikes or valleys aren’t that important during incubation.

During the actual hatch, after an egg has pipped, valleys can hurt. You need to make sure that the humidity stays up during that time period. I don’t worry about spikes them but valleys are not good.

 

[A roo or two]

Oh just to clarify, I do have that same bator. But this is also my first hatching experience, day 19 this afternoon. So I can't offer results, etc as to the method I used but I followed these tips. https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-to-incubate-hatch-eggs-using-the-dry-incubation-method

Do you have a turner or are you having to turn them by hand?

 

[iamfivewire]

Has the fan & auto- turner
our ambient room humidity is 16%

 

[A roo or two]

Has the fan & auto- turner
our ambient room humidity is 16%

ah, do you have a room humidifer? If you could get the humidity up in the room to around 50 and keep the door closed you will probably be able to stabilize your humidity in the bator to around 30.

 

[iamfivewire]

i dont have a humidifier

 

[A roo or two]

I have seen other post about removing all the plugs and using a fan to blow across the top (not on it but straight across the top) and it helped pull out the humidity. I turned my ceiling fan on low to help once when mine got higher than I wanted. But again, I used the dry method with no water in my bator until today, day 19.