I know its been asked 100 times but humidity was BAD & sticky chicks

[TriciaHowe]

Quote:
Same here. If there is condensation ... the humidity is to high for me. High humidity on hatch days causes sticky chicks.

I agreee. A lot of hatchers are very quick to jack their humidity up at the end and end up with sticky chicks and drowned chicks because of that. I would rather have my humidity on the lower side than the higher side personally. Good luck though and I hope it works out for you....

PS If it were me I would remove all the water from the bator....

 

[Smokin Silkies]

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Same here. If there is condensation ... the humidity is to high for me. High humidity on hatch days causes sticky chicks.

Ok, so high humidity causes sticky chicks. In my mind I was thinking it was because the humidity was too low during the first 18 days. There was condensation on the windows the last day after the first one hatched. after that I kept opening the window to let some out when that happened. I think it was too late though. I checked this morning and no progress ( I also had another pip about 9 pm last night) so I helped the 3 pipped ones that was about 36-48 hours after pips. They were so stuck and dry. They all got out ok and look good as of now. I washed the sticky stuff off of them and blow dried them and put them back in the bator til they completely dry. Thanks for the info!

 

[Smokin Silkies]

Quote:
Same here. If there is condensation ... the humidity is to high for me. High humidity on hatch days causes sticky chicks.

I agreee. A lot of hatchers are very quick to jack their humidity up at the end and end up with sticky chicks and drowned chicks because of that. I would rather have my humidity on the lower side than the higher side personally. Good luck though and I hope it works out for you....

PS If it were me I would remove all the water from the bator....

Hi, that's kinda what I did. I filled all of the water troughs with water. I couldn't tell exactly what my humidity level was cause of the messed up hygrometers. I didn't get any condensation til after the first hatch. I filled all of them up with water, because when I candled them, it seemed like they lost alot of moisture, the air cells were big in my opinion. I'm still learning about this and I just get so sad when I screw up. I bought 10 White Rocks, the guy sent 12. 2 were clear/infertile early on, so that left me with my original 10. They all developed and only one of them was a quitter. On day 18 the other 9 were all moving. It was my fault this time because of the stupid cheap hygrometers I used

So now I have 1 that hatched by himself and 3 others I helped. 1 is still in the egg and I will help her out in just a few. If they all live, I will have 5 chicks. Thanks for your help everybody!

 

[MuranoFarms]

Browneyebutterfly....understand that there is a ton of stuff going on in each and every egg that we don't know about! If a chick doesn't make it, try not to take it so hard! A lot of people say "don't help" because many times we help chicks that aren't strong enough to survive on their own. I've helped. I've helped shrink wrapped chicks that turned out just fine, and I've helped ones that pipped and didn't zip and every one was deformed. They only last a few days. Sometimes they don't get out on their own because there is something wrong with them that we can't fix. Other times, they just get 'stuck' and need some help. It's a call you'll learn to make. No matter what you decide, if it doesn't work out....don't beat yourself up over it! There's no guarantee that it would have turned out any differently if you had made a different decision!

About humidity: many people run dry hatches with humidity in the 20's & 30's and have great hatch rates! (there's a sticky on it in the top of this forum) Don't worry about your humidity then...worry about it right now. Get it down to where there's no condensation (tip the bator slightly to let it run out the bottom holes if its a styrofoam)