How to hatch eggs that haven't lost enough moisture?

[bibi87]

I have a batch of eggs at day 18 that have only lost 8.5% of their starting weight. (ran with 50% humidity for the first 10 days, then starting weighing them and have been trying to keep humidity as low as possible). How should I go about lockdown? I really don't want them to drown.

My plan, based on a few other threads here, is to stop turning them but maintain low humidity until the first egg externally pips. Then I will raise humidity for the hatch so they don't get shrink wrapped. Any advice?

 

[Eggscaping]

I feel your pain. The 8 eggs I incubated and hatched were our first. I read and read and re-read all the articles here on humidity (along with everything else about incubating eggs) and while my incubator held temp like a champ, humidity was all over the place. Finally one lady said that she lived in a high humidity area like we do, (Oregon, near the coast so ours is never under 50-ish) and she just "dry incubated" up until lock down and then took it to 75% for the rest. Before that I was adding water, and pouring off water and putting in paper towels and candling and so on. Since the eggs were shipped, the air cells were really hard to see during candling. One set of pics I posted here had folks saying that only one was good and the others were dead. Well, I threw up my hands, kept the humidity above 25% until lock down, then kept it at 75% when pips started and all 8 hatched. I had some pretty drenched chicks from the high hatching humidity, but all survived.
Is humidity not really the omg nail-chewer that some say, or did we just get lucky? I won't know until I can try again, which won't be for some time as we are at our total allowed number now. My newbie advice would be, don't stress. And please do let us know how it turns out. Others of course may chime in with different advice, all I can do is tell you what worked for me. Good luck!!!!