I messed up my incubation:Help

[Whitehouse Quail]

But doesn't that mean when the Batch A eggs are hatching, the other eggs will be going into lockdown? Where would be the problem? Unless, do you have a seperate hatcher?

 

[astronoc]

just one incubator and one brooder. i'm going to continue giving these batches a try but I did go out today and bought two new thermometers. When I checked it against my other digital thermometer, the temp was off by about 3 degrees higher. So i had to re-temp and restabilize everything. Oh well, more learning experiences. like i said, i dont think anything will come out after so many mistakes but i will still try just in case.

 

[jvls1942]

now I am confused.. how do you know which thermometer is correct?

what are you using for a hygrometer ?

 

[Akane]

Personally i think this "lockdown" is very over rated because i open my incubator whenever i feel i need to and i hatched 50 out of 57 fertile eggs this week

That depends on your location and setup. In some places of the country and at some times of the year it's a death sentence to open the bator. In more humid areas of the southern US it's not as much of an issue because the humidity outside the bator isn't much lower than inside. A hatch in the spring here I had no trouble opening the bator. A couple hatches over the winter and the dryer part of this summer I killed a whole bunch of chicks by opening the bator. Even spraying them doesn't help. I now throw in absolutely soaked paper towels whenever I open the bator during those dry seasons. That keeps the humidity up an extra 5% after I open it. Some days I wouldn't open the bator for anything because I know it would kill whatever is hatching. Different bators will also hold humidity better than others. My hova does much better than my lg even if I add more water area to the lg than it comes with.

For those in dryer climates or during dryer seasons it is much more likely you'll have a good hatch from stopping turning a few days early than from opening the bator to keep turning the later eggs. It really does no harm not turning them for a few more days. It also does no harm to turn them up until hatching if it weren't for the humidity. It's the humidity drop that causes problems not the turning.​

 

[DANNY]

A couple hatches over the winter and the dryer part of this summer I killed a whole bunch of chicks by opening the bator.

How do you know thats what killed them? There is a lot of things that can go wrong and a lot of the time one thing gets blamed when it was actually something else that caused the problem. You say spraying dosen't help and i find that hard to understand but as you say everybody dosen't have the same weather. All the extra humidity is for is to keep the membrane moist and spraying always does the trick for me. Maybe you could have sprayed them 2 or 3 times a day and helped.

 

[dancingbear]

Yeah, climate makes a big difference. Here, I can pretty much ignore the whole concept of "lock down". My humidity outside the bator is often around 65-70%, while it's 55-60% inside. Which is where I want it, or my chicks will be slimy.

I wouldn't try that in Arizona. Or in the winter, when our air is dryer.

 

[Akane]

I break every single egg that quits or dies during incubation and I have issues keeping my hands off when I see something potentially wrong during hatching. I also usually keep records of everything I do during a hatch and the readings on the thermometer and humidity gauge every time I check it along with what day an embryo probably died. After enough hatches of doing that you come to recognize most likely cause of death. I can gurantee you that several of the chicks I've killed had to do with low humidity. I also had plenty of hatches to compare where I didn't open the bator versus opening it or in wet weather versus dry. My hatch rates in winter are consistently about 1/4th lower if I open the bator during hatching. On another set of hatches I used thermometers and hygrometers I'd tested and used previously and had 2 batches of serama eggs from the same line of birds incubated together and then split into 2 different bators for hatching. I lost nearly all of the ones in the lg after opening it but only 2 in the hova after opening it to remove early hatched chicks. The hygrometer in the hova doesn't drop as quickly or as low as in the lg even if I switch the hygrometers. I've lost a lot more chicks to failure to pip internally when the weather is dry despite the hygrometer reading the same inside the bator as when the weather was wet. I've also had to help more chicks hatch from being dried to the inside of the shell after pipping when I've opened the bator to remove chicks that hatched earlier. I've never had to do that if I didn't open the bator. There was an entire thread on reasons that humidity inside the bator has to be higher for forced airs and places with low humidity and why some have good luck with dry incubation and others don't. Attempts to spray the eggs for several hatches resulted in the same losses as opening it without doing anything but adding paper towels if the bator needed to be opened has kept the hatch rate high the past dozen hatches.

 

[Paganbird]

Quote:
I agree completely... I have lost my fair share of chicks during a hatch from opening the 'bator. If anyone tries to tell me that it wasn't due to the humidity - They're just plain wrong.
I don't open the bator during lockdown without warm, soaked sponges ready to go.

 

[Germaine_11.20]

Akane, would you mind telling me what state you live in. I am having some major issues with exactly what you have described. I live in Idaho in high desert. Do you live in a dry climate?

 

[astronoc]

Quote:
I have a total of 5. Two were the ones that came with the incubator and i had a digital. The digital didnt quite match the normal ones that came with the incubator. When I bought two more digital thermometers then two of them showed the same temp while the other one was consistently off by 3 - 6 degrees.