Help! Humidity advice for large detached air cells!

[WVduckchick]

Hi there!
Wow Thank you, I’m super humbling that someone wants my advice. Again very new to this but I did a ton of research and went down a few black holes in the process digging for answers. At one point my husband thought I either fell asleep with my eyes open staring at my phone or that I’d been possessed. Haha the best advice I can give is that you read a lot and collect info from many different places. What I ended up deciding to do for my hatch was a combination of a lot of different helpful advice that I received. No one method is right or wrong and you need to decide for yourself.

Ok so here’s what I did:
When they arrived I set them big end up in an egg carton for about 16-18 hours at room temperature can’t remember exact hour. I read 12 hours which is what I intended but the 12 hour mark hit overnight so I set them in the incubator when I woke up the next morning.

I read later that 12 hours is really minimum so I probably should’ve done it for at least 24 or more.

When I set them in the incubator I laid them on their sides at 99 degrees at 40% humidity. I had decided on a drier incubation for the reasons listed above. Over the first several days the temp and humidity fluctuated between 98-101 and 30-42%. The fluctuations weren’t really intentional. My homemade incubator needed constant little adjustments as it was very influenced by the temp around it. I had it in my basement and it was generally about 60 degrees down there at night sometimes even cooler. The humidity didn’t fluctuate as much and when it did it was mostly from me opening the incubator. The great thing about using one so small is that the humidity would jump right back up really quickly because of the very small space. I candled at day 4 and saw that 5 of the 7 had visible veins. 1 showed nothing but a floating yoke and the other was the Maran egg and was too dark to tell. I put them all back in.
Day 8 was the day I noticed the crazy shaped and gigantic air cells and that’s when I panicked and started my research on detached air cells. Most of my research prior was about building my incubator and proper temp and humidity. I freaked out not just because of the shape but because of the size. I thought I had blown it with the low humidity and they wouldn’t have enough room to fully develop.
The most comforting and helpful advice I got was from @WVduckchick. You can read it on the first page of this thread. (Thank you again!) I was looking at the entire space as the air cell but in fact the saddling or outshoots aren’t necessarily full of air. They are just where the membrane has pulled away from the shell. The advice was to recandle and draw a pencil line around the entire air cell shape and a dotted line where the original or true air cell is so you can better judge the actual current size.
After doing this and seeing the air cells were actually normal size I decided not to raise the humidity and just stay the course.
I also learned at this point that I should’ve had them set upright with the large end up all along since they were shipped eggs. So I immediately corrected that and kept them that way through the remainder of the incubation. I used a cardboard egg carton with the sides cut down and bottoms cut out for circulation. I read both sides that this is necessary and also unnecessary (the cutting the egg carton I mean) but I decided to do it just to be safe.
I had an early quitter around day 10 with a visible blood ring and I took that one out.
I went through the remainder of the time until lockdown keeping the temp mostly between 98 and 101. Never above 101 but it did fall below 98 a couple times overnight on cooler nights when the basement temp dropped. I read that cooler is better than too warm and that they go through cooling periods naturally when the mother gets up to eat anyway. I kept the humidity between 30-40% until day 18.
The entire time the air cells continued to grow and remained crazy shaped. At day 18/19 a miraculous thing happened. I candled and the air cells looked almost totally normal. They were pretty big but had lost most of their extreme dips and saddles. I couldn’t believe it.
I raised the humidity to about 50% on day 17 because I wanted it to be easier to get to lockdown level humidity quicker. On day 18 I raised humidity to 69% and kept it between 65% to 72% until they hatched. I inserted a syringe into the side of the incubator into the water container so I didn’t have to open it to add water. Although given the amount of times I opened it to candle and make little adjustments to their set up, I’m not sure this was necessary.

Turning: there is varied advice about turning with shipped eggs. Some say don’t for the first few days while others say turning is the most crucial during the first several days for any egg. I read a lot of this after the fact. I turned them 3-5 times a day every day until day 15. I turned them when I had them laying down and upright. At day 15 I read this is a good time to stop because the chance of them getting stuck to one side of the egg has mostly passed and also it allows the air cell to further stabilize and reattach. I had them tilted with the lowest part of the air cell facing up. From then on any candling I did I made sure to do without turning the egg upside down. Meaning I put the candler upside down on top of the egg instead of sitting the egg on top of the candler.

The yolker still showed no development so I disposed of it and went into lockdown with 5 eggs all showing movement.
When I candled on day 18 to find my air cells almost normal I drew another line around them so I could see the highest and lowest points. That way when I set them i would know which way to tilt and I also in case I needed to assist or create a safety hole I wanted to ensure I knew what was air cell and what wasn’t.
They all pipped at the right end and hatched on their own between day 21 and early in the morning on day 22. I did make a safety hole for the Maran because I was worried that she had internally pipped (I could hear her chirping) and 24+ hours later still hadn’t externally pipped. But in retrospect I don’t think I needed to do this. She was my only Maran egg so I really wanted her to make it. She did most of the rest of the hatching on her own and probably would’ve been totally fine with no safety hole. Lesson learned. Have more patience and trust that they know what they are doing.

I also want to openly admit that I candled ALOT. i also opened the incubator during lockdown. I know, bad idea. But when the first two had pipped and the other 3 hadn’t I was worried they were malpositioned and/or had possibly pipped upside down.Or on the side that I couldn’t see. Whenever I needed to open it I took a spray bottle of warm water and sprayed it into the incubator to raise the humidity.

Expect the air cells to be misshapen and detached with shipped eggs but don’t think that because they are detached that it’s a death sentence. One thing I do wish I did among a thousand others is set the eggs sooner in the incubator and upright. You want the eggs to get to room temperature if they are cool when they arrive so putting them directly into a 100 degree incubator could be shocking but it doesn’t take that long for them to get to room temp. If I could do it again I would’ve let them sit big side up for 4 to 6 hours then set them in the incubator the same way. The air cells need to stabilize with shipped eggs but there’s no saying you can’t let them settle after shipment while also warming up in the incubator. If you live in a warm climate and they aren’t cool when they arrive you could probably set them upright in the incubator pretty much right away. What I read said that you don’t know how old the eggs are when they are shipped and since each day aged decreases viability it’s best to set them in the incubator right away.
Also I wasn’t as gentle as I could’ve been while unwrapping them. I didn’t know about detached air cells at that point. They were wrapped in bubbled wrap and shipped laying on their sides with lots of soft filler allowing minimal movement in the box. When I opened them I just rolled them out of the bubble wrap allowing them to spin as I unwrapped. Probably shouldn’t have done that. Best to hold the egg steady and move the wrapping not the egg.

I’ll post some pictures so you see just how bad my air cells were. I wish you the best of luck!

 

[ronott1]

Hi there!
Wow Thank you, I’m super humbling that someone wants my advice. Again very new to this but I did a ton of research and went down a few black holes in the process digging for answers. At one point my husband thought I either fell asleep with my eyes open staring at my phone or that I’d been possessed. Haha the best advice I can give is that you read a lot and collect info from many different places. What I ended up deciding to do for my hatch was a combination of a lot of different helpful advice that I received. No one method is right or wrong and you need to decide for yourself.

Ok so here’s what I did:
When they arrived I set them big end up in an egg carton for about 16-18 hours at room temperature can’t remember exact hour. I read 12 hours which is what I intended but the 12 hour mark hit overnight so I set them in the incubator when I woke up the next morning.

I read later that 12 hours is really minimum so I probably should’ve done it for at least 24 or more.

When I set them in the incubator I laid them on their sides at 99 degrees at 40% humidity. I had decided on a drier incubation for the reasons listed above. Over the first several days the temp and humidity fluctuated between 98-101 and 30-42%. The fluctuations weren’t really intentional. My homemade incubator needed constant little adjustments as it was very influenced by the temp around it. I had it in my basement and it was generally about 60 degrees down there at night sometimes even cooler. The humidity didn’t fluctuate as much and when it did it was mostly from me opening the incubator. The great thing about using one so small is that the humidity would jump right back up really quickly because of the very small space. I candled at day 4 and saw that 5 of the 7 had visible veins. 1 showed nothing but a floating yoke and the other was the Maran egg and was too dark to tell. I put them all back in.
Day 8 was the day I noticed the crazy shaped and gigantic air cells and that’s when I panicked and started my research on detached air cells. Most of my research prior was about building my incubator and proper temp and humidity. I freaked out not just because of the shape but because of the size. I thought I had blown it with the low humidity and they wouldn’t have enough room to fully develop.
The most comforting and helpful advice I got was from @WVduckchick. You can read it on the first page of this thread. (Thank you again!) I was looking at the entire space as the air cell but in fact the saddling or outshoots aren’t necessarily full of air. They are just where the membrane has pulled away from the shell. The advice was to recandle and draw a pencil line around the entire air cell shape and a dotted line where the original or true air cell is so you can better judge the actual current size.
After doing this and seeing the air cells were actually normal size I decided not to raise the humidity and just stay the course.
I also learned at this point that I should’ve had them set upright with the large end up all along since they were shipped eggs. So I immediately corrected that and kept them that way through the remainder of the incubation. I used a cardboard egg carton with the sides cut down and bottoms cut out for circulation. I read both sides that this is necessary and also unnecessary (the cutting the egg carton I mean) but I decided to do it just to be safe.
I had an early quitter around day 10 with a visible blood ring and I took that one out.
I went through the remainder of the time until lockdown keeping the temp mostly between 98 and 101. Never above 101 but it did fall below 98 a couple times overnight on cooler nights when the basement temp dropped. I read that cooler is better than too warm and that they go through cooling periods naturally when the mother gets up to eat anyway. I kept the humidity between 30-40% until day 18.
The entire time the air cells continued to grow and remained crazy shaped. At day 18/19 a miraculous thing happened. I candled and the air cells looked almost totally normal. They were pretty big but had lost most of their extreme dips and saddles. I couldn’t believe it.
I raised the humidity to about 50% on day 17 because I wanted it to be easier to get to lockdown level humidity quicker. On day 18 I raised humidity to 69% and kept it between 65% to 72% until they hatched. I inserted a syringe into the side of the incubator into the water container so I didn’t have to open it to add water. Although given the amount of times I opened it to candle and make little adjustments to their set up, I’m not sure this was necessary.

Turning: there is varied advice about turning with shipped eggs. Some say don’t for the first few days while others say turning is the most crucial during the first several days for any egg. I read a lot of this after the fact. I turned them 3-5 times a day every day until day 15. I turned them when I had them laying down and upright. At day 15 I read this is a good time to stop because the chance of them getting stuck to one side of the egg has mostly passed and also it allows the air cell to further stabilize and reattach. I had them tilted with the lowest part of the air cell facing up. From then on any candling I did I made sure to do without turning the egg upside down. Meaning I put the candler upside down on top of the egg instead of sitting the egg on top of the candler.

The yolker still showed no development so I disposed of it and went into lockdown with 5 eggs all showing movement.
When I candled on day 18 to find my air cells almost normal I drew another line around them so I could see the highest and lowest points. That way when I set them i would know which way to tilt and I also in case I needed to assist or create a safety hole I wanted to ensure I knew what was air cell and what wasn’t.
They all pipped at the right end and hatched on their own between day 21 and early in the morning on day 22. I did make a safety hole for the Maran because I was worried that she had internally pipped (I could hear her chirping) and 24+ hours later still hadn’t externally pipped. But in retrospect I don’t think I needed to do this. She was my only Maran egg so I really wanted her to make it. She did most of the rest of the hatching on her own and probably would’ve been totally fine with no safety hole. Lesson learned. Have more patience and trust that they know what they are doing.

I also want to openly admit that I candled ALOT. i also opened the incubator during lockdown. I know, bad idea. But when the first two had pipped and the other 3 hadn’t I was worried they were malpositioned and/or had possibly pipped upside down.Or on the side that I couldn’t see. Whenever I needed to open it I took a spray bottle of warm water and sprayed it into the incubator to raise the humidity.

Expect the air cells to be misshapen and detached with shipped eggs but don’t think that because they are detached that it’s a death sentence. One thing I do wish I did among a thousand others is set the eggs sooner in the incubator and upright. You want the eggs to get to room temperature if they are cool when they arrive so putting them directly into a 100 degree incubator could be shocking but it doesn’t take that long for them to get to room temp. If I could do it again I would’ve let them sit big side up for 4 to 6 hours then set them in the incubator the same way. The air cells need to stabilize with shipped eggs but there’s no saying you can’t let them settle after shipment while also warming up in the incubator. If you live in a warm climate and they aren’t cool when they arrive you could probably set them upright in the incubator pretty much right away. What I read said that you don’t know how old the eggs are when they are shipped and since each day aged decreases viability it’s best to set them in the incubator right away.
Also I wasn’t as gentle as I could’ve been while unwrapping them. I didn’t know about detached air cells at that point. They were wrapped in bubbled wrap and shipped laying on their sides with lots of soft filler allowing minimal movement in the box. When I opened them I just rolled them out of the bubble wrap allowing them to spin as I unwrapped. Probably shouldn’t have done that. Best to hold the egg steady and move the wrapping not the egg.

I’ll post some pictures so you see just how bad my air cells were. I wish you the best of luck!

With some pictures and links this would make a very good article in the learning center!

 

[Eggs_With_Legs]

Hi there!
Wow Thank you, I’m super humbling that someone wants my advice. Again very new to this but I did a ton of research and went down a few black holes in the process digging for answers. At one point my husband thought I either fell asleep with my eyes open staring at my phone or that I’d been possessed. Haha the best advice I can give is that you read a lot and collect info from many different places. What I ended up deciding to do for my hatch was a combination of a lot of different helpful advice that I received. No one method is right or wrong and you need to decide for yourself.

Ok so here’s what I did:
When they arrived I set them big end up in an egg carton for about 16-18 hours at room temperature can’t remember exact hour. I read 12 hours which is what I intended but the 12 hour mark hit overnight so I set them in the incubator when I woke up the next morning.

I read later that 12 hours is really minimum so I probably should’ve done it for at least 24 or more.

When I set them in the incubator I laid them on their sides at 99 degrees at 40% humidity. I had decided on a drier incubation for the reasons listed above. Over the first several days the temp and humidity fluctuated between 98-101 and 30-42%. The fluctuations weren’t really intentional. My homemade incubator needed constant little adjustments as it was very influenced by the temp around it. I had it in my basement and it was generally about 60 degrees down there at night sometimes even cooler. The humidity didn’t fluctuate as much and when it did it was mostly from me opening the incubator. The great thing about using one so small is that the humidity would jump right back up really quickly because of the very small space. I candled at day 4 and saw that 5 of the 7 had visible veins. 1 showed nothing but a floating yoke and the other was the Maran egg and was too dark to tell. I put them all back in.
Day 8 was the day I noticed the crazy shaped and gigantic air cells and that’s when I panicked and started my research on detached air cells. Most of my research prior was about building my incubator and proper temp and humidity. I freaked out not just because of the shape but because of the size. I thought I had blown it with the low humidity and they wouldn’t have enough room to fully develop.
The most comforting and helpful advice I got was from @WVduckchick. You can read it on the first page of this thread. (Thank you again!) I was looking at the entire space as the air cell but in fact the saddling or outshoots aren’t necessarily full of air. They are just where the membrane has pulled away from the shell. The advice was to recandle and draw a pencil line around the entire air cell shape and a dotted line where the original or true air cell is so you can better judge the actual current size.
After doing this and seeing the air cells were actually normal size I decided not to raise the humidity and just stay the course.
I also learned at this point that I should’ve had them set upright with the large end up all along since they were shipped eggs. So I immediately corrected that and kept them that way through the remainder of the incubation. I used a cardboard egg carton with the sides cut down and bottoms cut out for circulation. I read both sides that this is necessary and also unnecessary (the cutting the egg carton I mean) but I decided to do it just to be safe.
I had an early quitter around day 10 with a visible blood ring and I took that one out.
I went through the remainder of the time until lockdown keeping the temp mostly between 98 and 101. Never above 101 but it did fall below 98 a couple times overnight on cooler nights when the basement temp dropped. I read that cooler is better than too warm and that they go through cooling periods naturally when the mother gets up to eat anyway. I kept the humidity between 30-40% until day 18.
The entire time the air cells continued to grow and remained crazy shaped. At day 18/19 a miraculous thing happened. I candled and the air cells looked almost totally normal. They were pretty big but had lost most of their extreme dips and saddles. I couldn’t believe it.
I raised the humidity to about 50% on day 17 because I wanted it to be easier to get to lockdown level humidity quicker. On day 18 I raised humidity to 69% and kept it between 65% to 72% until they hatched. I inserted a syringe into the side of the incubator into the water container so I didn’t have to open it to add water. Although given the amount of times I opened it to candle and make little adjustments to their set up, I’m not sure this was necessary.

Turning: there is varied advice about turning with shipped eggs. Some say don’t for the first few days while others say turning is the most crucial during the first several days for any egg. I read a lot of this after the fact. I turned them 3-5 times a day every day until day 15. I turned them when I had them laying down and upright. At day 15 I read this is a good time to stop because the chance of them getting stuck to one side of the egg has mostly passed and also it allows the air cell to further stabilize and reattach. I had them tilted with the lowest part of the air cell facing up. From then on any candling I did I made sure to do without turning the egg upside down. Meaning I put the candler upside down on top of the egg instead of sitting the egg on top of the candler.

The yolker still showed no development so I disposed of it and went into lockdown with 5 eggs all showing movement.
When I candled on day 18 to find my air cells almost normal I drew another line around them so I could see the highest and lowest points. That way when I set them i would know which way to tilt and I also in case I needed to assist or create a safety hole I wanted to ensure I knew what was air cell and what wasn’t.
They all pipped at the right end and hatched on their own between day 21 and early in the morning on day 22. I did make a safety hole for the Maran because I was worried that she had internally pipped (I could hear her chirping) and 24+ hours later still hadn’t externally pipped. But in retrospect I don’t think I needed to do this. She was my only Maran egg so I really wanted her to make it. She did most of the rest of the hatching on her own and probably would’ve been totally fine with no safety hole. Lesson learned. Have more patience and trust that they know what they are doing.

I also want to openly admit that I candled ALOT. i also opened the incubator during lockdown. I know, bad idea. But when the first two had pipped and the other 3 hadn’t I was worried they were malpositioned and/or had possibly pipped upside down.Or on the side that I couldn’t see. Whenever I needed to open it I took a spray bottle of warm water and sprayed it into the incubator to raise the humidity.

Expect the air cells to be misshapen and detached with shipped eggs but don’t think that because they are detached that it’s a death sentence. One thing I do wish I did among a thousand others is set the eggs sooner in the incubator and upright. You want the eggs to get to room temperature if they are cool when they arrive so putting them directly into a 100 degree incubator could be shocking but it doesn’t take that long for them to get to room temp. If I could do it again I would’ve let them sit big side up for 4 to 6 hours then set them in the incubator the same way. The air cells need to stabilize with shipped eggs but there’s no saying you can’t let them settle after shipment while also warming up in the incubator. If you live in a warm climate and they aren’t cool when they arrive you could probably set them upright in the incubator pretty much right away. What I read said that you don’t know how old the eggs are when they are shipped and since each day aged decreases viability it’s best to set them in the incubator right away.
Also I wasn’t as gentle as I could’ve been while unwrapping them. I didn’t know about detached air cells at that point. They were wrapped in bubbled wrap and shipped laying on their sides with lots of soft filler allowing minimal movement in the box. When I opened them I just rolled them out of the bubble wrap allowing them to spin as I unwrapped. Probably shouldn’t have done that. Best to hold the egg steady and move the wrapping not the egg.

I’ll post some pictures so you see just how bad my air cells were. I wish you the best of luck!

Awesome, thank you so much!! I'm going to be coming back to this a lot in the coming week. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down!! I have done a lot of research on this, but sometimes it's just nice to get real time advice from someone who recently had success with it! TY, TY <3

 

[Mablethechicken]

Awesome, thank you so much!! I'm going to be coming back to this a lot in the coming week. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down!! I have done a lot of research on this, but sometimes it's just nice to get real time advice from someone who recently had success with it! TY, TY <3

You’re so welcome! Just paying it forward. I’ll be checking back if you have any questions during!

 

[Mablethechicken]

Thanks just paying it forward from all the help and guidance I received!

 

[Mablethechicken]

With some pictures and links this would make a very good article in the learning center!

Sorry I meant to follow up with some photos!

You can see in the pictures of the eggs how crazy the air cells were. They changed a lot during the process the final shape was the light blue line.

I also forgot to mention (because I didn’t remember until the pictures jogged my memory) that when I saw internal pips during candling I circled where it was on the egg and made sure to have that side of the egg facing up. You can see in both the mystery eggs (the light brown/pink one and the cream tinted one) that in both cases they pipped in the top right of the circle I drew which makes perfect sense if you think about the trajectory of the beak under the wing poking up through the air cell. You can see it really well in the one of the hatched chick. She’s standing behind the other mystery egg that had yet to hatch.
The first couple photos are earlier on but the later ones you can see my dotted lines (per @WVduckchick ’s advice) outlining the real air cell and the blue line is the final shape at lockdown. You can see how much lore normal it looks and how the crazy curves softened.

 

[ronott1]

Sorry I meant to follow up with some photos!

You can see in the pictures of the eggs how crazy the air cells were. They changed a lot during the process the final shape was the light blue line.

I also forgot to mention (because I didn’t remember until the pictures jogged my memory) that when I saw internal pips during candling I circled where it was on the egg and made sure to have that side of the egg facing up. You can see in both the mystery eggs (the light brown/pink one and the cream tinted one) that in both cases they pipped in the top right of the circle I drew which makes perfect sense if you think about the trajectory of the beak under the wing poking up through the air cell. You can see it really well in the one of the hatched chick. She’s standing behind the other mystery egg that had yet to hatch.
The first couple photos are earlier on but the later ones you can see my dotted lines (per @WVduckchick ’s advice) outlining the real air cell and the blue line is the final shape at lockdown. You can see how much lore normal it looks and how the crazy curves softened. View attachment 2136046View attachment 2136047View attachment 2136048View attachment 2136049View attachment 2136050View attachment 2136051View attachment 2136052View attachment 2136053

Nice!

 

[amibpoe]

Ok so I candles today and all have great movement! It’s day 14. These are the air cells. I assume I should bring the humidity down? Hope you can tell! Some seem very “to the side”. Almost like the air cell is on the side. Thanks for all your advice!

 

[WVduckchick]

Ok so I candles today and all have great movement! It’s day 14. These are the air cells. I assume I should bring the humidity down? Hope you can tell! Some seem very “to the side”. Almost like the air cell is on the side. Thanks for all your advice!

those look fine to me for day 14. Remember, on the ones that dip low down the side, the main air cell is still in the end of the egg. The dip is just an area where the membrane has pulled away from the shell. Usually the only issue with these is depending where they pip, I’ve seen them get somewhat tangled in the loose membrane. But overall, yours look fine! Good luck!

 

[amibpoe]

those look fine to me for day 14. Remember, on the ones that dip low down the side, the main air cell is still in the end of the egg. The dip is just an area where the membrane has pulled away from the shell. Usually the only issue with these is depending where they pip, I’ve seen them get somewhat tangled in the loose membrane. But overall, yours look fine! Good luck!

I know newbies must be so annoying. I also know I probably shouldn’t be candling this much BUT, I turned down my humidity a little. The air cell on a few seems to be getting bigger at the saddle. Please tell me what you think! Also, on another thread someone mentioned candling before lock down to see how I should lay them for hatching. How will I tell if they should be facing up or if they should lay down on the side? Thanks for all yalls help! These are day 18.