GOING BACK TO BASICS!!!

Only ONE of my lavender eggs hatched over the weekend, and it was a lavender split, so its black. I lost the other four lavender eggs, and another two blue/black eggs. I suppose I shouldn't have left our very irresponsible roomate in charge of everything, since it would appear he didn't pay attention to the outside birds as well.

But, I got to thinking that even though the incubator was holding temps perfectly, and humidity hasn't been an issue, the only other thing that I can attribute it to is the aftermarket jerry rigged PC cooling fan I had in there was TOO strong. So I'm going back to basics, and removing it, and going to use the 1602n as a still air as it was meant to be.

I have about 6 blue/black eggs to go in there, and four more lavender eggs going in tonight, after I level off the still air temps. We'll see if the removal of the fan helps out and ups my hatch rate. I'm very tired of loosing 3/4 of all the eggs I set. I'm assuming that even though humidity is high, the fan is drying them out too much.

I've had very high still air hatch rates in the past, so we'll see if I can recover from this bad run...

 

Well after I got the news that this hatch went so bad, I started thinking about everything I was doing and evaluating my hatching routine.

And I started thinking about the fact that when I had my still air LG, I was getting 75% hatch rates or even better most times. It wasn't until last summer that I added the pc cooling fan that I started getting crappy hatches. And then I started thinking about all the last hatches i've had over the last few months. Most of the eggs that I lost and opened up had that shrink wrapped look to them, which is a humidity issue. But this last hatch was in the new hovabator, which was holding temps and humidity fine. I mean it was on the mark when I left on friday. However the fan that was in the LG was now in the HB, so the only thing that I can think is that even though humidity was up, the fan was still to strong and dropped the humidity inside the eggs and dried them out.

So, by process of elimination, I'm back to the basic still air stryrofoam. The cabinet incubator works like a dream, except I can't get humidity up over 50%, so I bought the HB. The HB holds temps and humidity great, but the hatch was still bad, I can only assume due to the fan. So now I've eliminated all the issues by going back to a smaller still air hatcher. If I get anything more than one or two chicks from this next set of 9 eggs going in tonight, I'll know it was the fan, which I will do away with in a hurry.

 

Well its really the only thing left. I've bought an entire new incubator to fix the humidity problems, I've added an entirely new thermometer to make sure temps are accurate, so I dont know what else it could be. It can't be bacteria because this is a brand spanking new incubator I am using as a hatcher, and it was spotless when I started it up. So this fan HAS to be the culprit.

When I really think about it, my hatching problems started about this time last year when I added the fan, but I chalked it up to a really dry drought environment that we had in Texas last year. And everyone was having bad hatches so I didn't think twice about it. My hatch rate increased a little when I started using the big cabinet incubator, but it wasn't optimal hatches since humidity was only around 50%. So it wasn't until I got this new incubator to use as a hatcher, and have had two bad hatches that I started detailing and evaluating the last year in my head.

Like I said, if this hatch gets better than one or two chicks from the 9 I have in there, then I'll know for sure the fan is the culprit. These 9 are due to start hatching on Wednesday, so we'll see.

Temps in the Hovabator are holding at 100 right now, and humidity has fallen back to 71% to 75% since I've opened both plugs.

I've got to say that after 5 years of hatching and raising birds, I really feel stupid right about now... But I guess thats the price we pay when we try to interfer and "make things better."