Humidity?

[Chickengal505]

My father has hatched out so many birds over the yards its crazy. He was a quail breeder and hatched out chickens as well. He says my humidty needs to be about 60% but alot of you are saying chicks are drowning at that humidity. I'm torn and worried about my 11 day old eggs...

where SHOULD my humidity be? at the moment it's at 60% and it's been their all 11 days...

 

[Chickengal505]

Bump?

I'm sorry just worried...

 

[Chickengal505]

No one has ANYTHIG to say? Thats strange for this bunch

 

[Teresaann24]

I like to run mine from 35-40 and at day 18 bump it to about 65-70 I use a LG and I don't fill all the wells just the biggest one. Then on day 18 I fill them all and add a sponge.

 

[Pascal PicklePants]

Quote:
X2 I don't have an LG, but try for about the same humidity levels.

 

[Chickengal505]

My father told me to run it at 60% the whole hatch... Gotta ask him about that.

 

[StormyMoon]

I have an LG Incubator, mine is running between 39 - 42 % humidity, it does go up and down, but the last 3 days you do want to bump it up to about 60% The perfect humidity would be between 45 - 55 % from day 1 - day 18 , then from day 18 - 21 you want that up to about 60 %.

What I will have to do is fill all areas with water and add a few rags in there just to get the humidity up. Using warm water if you use water that is too hot it can cause your thermometer to read really high spikes in temperature.

 

[iplsmama]

My humidity was too high on my very first hatch and only got one chickie out of 7 eggs. I am sure it was humidity because they were all healthy and developing until lockdown. I am quite sure they drowned in the shell or got too big to maneuver to hatch. This time I am going to try the "dry" method and keep the humidity below 50 until lockdown, then up above 60 for lockdown. My house is so humid I don't even need to add water to my bator to keep it decent. I would lower the humidity if I were you but I'm no expert.

 

[Dogfish]

I've run mine at 45-50% (LG) until lockdown when I added a sponge in water under tha fan. Bumps it up to 60%+ in a hurry. Chicks are hatching fine right now, and my other 2 batches did well, same plan.

I think that a lot of this information is more of a guideline than a rule written in stone. (Temp seems to be most important of all factors) Try to hit a range on your humidity.

Best of luck!

 

[gumbii]

i know some people with cabinet incubators leave the bator at 55% the entire process... maybe his hygrometer was off by 5%...? or maybe you can do 60% too...? i dunno...