HELP!! Poor hatch or Expected hatch?

[SwampChicken]

I have a genesis 1588 with a turner. I set it up and placed 10 turkey eggs, 11 guinea eggs and 3 duck eggs in it. Humidity at 40% and temp setting dead on 100.5 degrees. One week later I placed a dozen leghorn eggs and 6 banty eggs in it for the 21 remaining days. I removed all the turkey eggs because they turned out to be not fertile. On day 18 or 25 however you want to look at it, I removed my turner and laid all the eggs on their side increased humidity to 65%. The next morning I had 3 guinea eggs hatched, on day 20 I had 11 leghorn eggs hatch. Everything else failed to hatch. On day 23 I cracked open every egg I had that didn't hatch. Every egg had a fully developed dead chick with the yoke drawn in. What did I do wrong? It appears to me that these chicks died at the point I removed the turner and increased the humidity. I lost 6 banty, 8 guinea, 3 ducks. HELP, I'm about to start another batch.

 

[jimnjay]

Test your hygrometer. It sounds like they drowned when they broke through the membrane. That is due to high humidity. When you hatch again run the whole thing at a lower humidity. There is a thread on how to test your Hygrometer. http://exoticpets.about.com/od/herpresources/ss/hygrometer_4.htm

You can't change the settings to get the instrument to read the correct numbers in most hygrometers. You have to make the calculation for the difference when you read it. I have written on my hygrometer the number of points I have to add to the reading to get the correct humidity.

I doubt it had anything at all to do with the turning it just happens that it is the same time the chicks are doing the internal pip.

 

[SwampChicken]

That is kinda what I thought, but I wouldn't have thought 40% humidity would do that. Maybe the hygrometer is giving false reading as you suggested. Hygrometer on this batch is around 30% and I'm going to try this dry incubation method.

 

[Gumdrops]

I had the same thing happen with my first hatch. Out of 24 eggs I had only 1 make it. This time I did not candle at all and kept humidity at 28-35% day 1-18 and increased it to 50% to finish out. So far I have 11 chicks out of 24, happy and healthy, and they are still popping. So I think with my homemade contraption, those are better settings for me. I would definitely keep your humidity a little lower in the final days next time. The first hatch where mine all drowned I had raised mine to 60-70%