Hatching while incubating

[Countrypunk92]

I have a big Incubator and have 3 batches of eggs in... Ive kept the temp 98-99 and humity 50-60%
well today is day 18 for the first batch so I laid them in the hatching shelf( Below the egg turners) and Relized... If I up the humidity to 75-80 percent...Wont that kill the other eggs?
HALP! lol

 

[mstricer]

How long do the other eggs have?

 

[Shayna]

That's the problem I've read with staggering eggs in an incubator. You need really high humidity for the older ones to hatch at lockdown, but yes, it may likely drown the younger eggs. Hopefully someone can give you suggestions. I guess I would try to go with the lowest percent to get a safe hatch out of the older eggs without shrink wrapping them and risk the other eggs. I'm not sure what that humidity level would be.

 

[Countrypunk92]

Quote:
The second batch should hatch out next thursday or friday, and the thrird has another week or two.

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
Well, you won't automatically drown the others at this stage just by having high humidity for a few days. It probably wouldn't harm them until they were also due to hatch, at which point any excess fluid still in the egg might then drown them. You can always drop the humidity down a bit lower than normal for a few days after the first lot have hatched, to compensate for the few days of high humidity. As long as they lose the correct amount of moisture by lockdown, it's very unlikely that they'll drown. A bigger problem is probably going to be how you turn some eggs and not others while your bator is locked down.

Like Shayna says, try to figure out what's the lowest safe humidity to use for the first lot to hatch out safely, so you're not over-humidifying the other ones unnecessarily. I don't know what humidity would work best, maybe something around 60%? What humidity do you normally hatch at?

 

[Countrypunk92]

Its been at 50 to 55 for 18 days and im going to.keep it 65 now.

This is my fitst batch and I have egg turners.

 

[Gypsy07]

Ah, so you can take some eggs out of the turners and leave others in them? Cool. That makes it a lot easier then. Neither of my bators have that option - when I stagger hatches the turning is either all the eggs or none of them unless I turn by hand. 65% sounds good, and once the first lot has hatched you can drop it down to maybe 40% for a few days, and that should even things out.