How bad is this?

[hbarn]

I sat up listening to my first egg peeping and reading up on hatching optimistically last night day 20 of my first hatch. I had a pipped and halfway zipped egg at 4;00am when I checked and got a few more hours of sleep. When I checked at 6:15 I had a chick! and a 94 degree homemade bator with the light bulb burned out. Obviously had to open the bator and replace the bulb, the chick looks great despite the glitch, in your collective experience how big a deal is this to the remaining 6 eggs? The humidity looks good around 70% on my digital unit, my regular thermometer never dropped as low as the 94 reading on the digital which is very reactive. I know how undesireable opening the bator is at hatch time but had no choice an obvious problem with my simple homemade bator.

 

[Boyd]

I wouldn't worry too much. I know it's a no no, but I do staggered hatches in an old LG. So I have the lid off more than what is recommended. 2 weeks ago I had quail hatching about 5 days before I had chickens due and had to pull those fuzzy butts out as quick as they were hatching so they wouldn't get stuck under the auto-turner

PS, my hatch rates are usually pretty good. Just watch your humidity

 

[KattyKillFish]

wow, sounds like all is going well!! congrats on the first chick!

 

[KattyKillFish]

Quote:
can you explain a but more about this?? i have eggs due to hatch on the 5th and the 7th. i'm a bit worried!

 

[hbarn]

Thanks for the encouragement all. I've read a bunch of opinions on humidity and just went with the 45%-50% during incubation and tried to raise it to 65% -75% hatching that I read in most of the extension and university guides but I know that's higher than many BYC folks prefer. This is going to be a process to learn.

I'm relieved to hear this may not be as catastrophic as I had feared.

 

[Boyd]

Quote:
can you explain a but more about this?? i have eggs due to hatch on the 5th and the 7th. i'm a bit worried!

Well, I had to pull the middle three rails off my auto turner on day 14 for my quail, and left the 2 outer rails setup for chickens. Then I cut a paper lid off a 18 count paper egg carton and used that to hold all the quail eggs and keep them from getting smooshed by the chicken rails. It keeps a pretty full incubator this way, but it works.

Day 16-18 as I had quail hatching I had to pull them out so others had room to hatch, take the chicken eggs off the racks and pull out the turner, and the whole time I kept my humidity between 35-45% for the total time cept when chicks started hatching. That alone pushed my humidity to over 65-70%.

 

[KattyKillFish]

doesn't the humidity effect the hatch rate of the other birds? how was your hatch rate?