Humidity problems!

[MandaElaine]

Hi everyone! I have not used my incubator in years, but broke it out the other day after a friend gave me some eggs to hatch. My husband picked up an inexpensive thermometer with a hygrometer. The humidity was not reading correctly, so I borrowed another hygrometer from a friend. That one was not reading correctly either! I went out and bought a digital thermometer/hygrometer and finally got accurate readings!

After all of that, it took two days to get the temperature right. The humidity was staying right around 58, so I thought it was safe to put in the eggs. It has taken most of the day for the incubator to get back up to temperature, but now the humidity is reading 62. Should I leave it alone or attempt to bring the humidity down?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I have around 40 eggs in the 'bator, so I don't want to ruin them!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know what humidity you are shooting for, maybe the 58%? We all use different ones. I understand you are concerned that the humidity is too high.

What you are after in controlling the humidity is controlling how much moisture the egg loses over the entire incubation period. Average humidity over the incubation period is more important than any instantaneous humidity, at least until you get to lockdown.

The way I see it, you have two options. One is to go in there and try to immediately bring the humidity down. I don’t know what type you have or how easy it is to bring it down. If you control it by reservoirs in there, what controls the humidity is surface area of the water. You can maybe put some foil over part of a reservoir to reduce the surface area. If you have use a sponge or paper towel in there, well remove it or do something to reduce the surface area. If you have another type, I can’t help you.

The other option is a bit more of a seat of the pants, but keep track of how long it runs higher than you want and run it enough with lower humidity later to get your average back where you want it. It really doesn’t matter what it is at any one time as long as it loses enough moisture but not too much.

 

[MandaElaine]

I have a hova-bator with reservoirs to control the humidity. I am fairly new to this, so I'm really not sure what humidity level would be best. I wasn't sure if it was normal for the level to go up when I put in the eggs, or if I should try covering some of the reservoir area. If it's not harmful for them to start out with a higher humidity, I will leave it alone.

 

[Runawaylobster]

Well first thing i would do is put the bator in a closet, you don't need to close the door just that the air in closets is still and not affected by an ac or heater vent.

Wet bulb temperature can be pretty accurate for humidity, a home made one can easily be set up by using a piece of shoelace as a wick and putting the other end in a small container of water and using a regular bulb thermometer.

Third thing is that humiditiy is much more forgiving than temperature, so the real thing is to watch the weight change or change in air cell size of your eggs. Sallysunshine has articles on this on BYC...

I hope this helps a little, these are the things i did with my LG..

my new GQF seems to be at about 40%-45% and i am happy with that for incubation