In your experience, what's better, higher humidity or lower humidity?

[dancingbear]

Quote:
I agree, plus, during incubation, most of us open the 'bator from time to time. 3 X's a day, or more, if you're hand-turning. So the room humidity can have an impact on the eggs.

I'm in KY, our humidity is probably similar to yours. With no added water, my hum during incubation runs about 45%, while the ambient humidity in the room may be as high as 70%. I raise the hum to 55%-60% for the last three days. I get damp, rather than wet, chicks. They don't stick to shells, and they hatch easily, with no help from me. If they take a few days for them to finish, I can open the 'bator to take out the dry, fluffy ones, and relieve the overcrowding a bit, without fear of drying them too much, because the room is so humid. If I were in Arizona, or some other dry climate, it might kill the unhatched chicks if I did that.

I get a high hatch rate with my own eggs, and sometimes with eggs I picked up locally, but my hatch rates with shipped eggs haven't been very good at all. My best 2 were 50% with turkey eggs from MHM, and 7 out of 24 with eggs from Seriousbill's Delawares. That one, I did have temp and humidity issues, I think I'd have hatched more of those otherwise. They had a high rate of development, they were good eggs and well packed. All other shipped eggs, 4 batches, I got 1 chick from a bunch of Dorking eggs, and 0 from the rest. A second batch of Dorkings I got 0, but I had three eggs from my own EE's in with them, and they all hatched with no trouble at all.

 

[NateinFL]

From all that I've read on this post, I feel that the information provided on other websites, even from university websites, is a little misleading. One website said to keep it at 60-65%, I know that's just way too high. There seems to be a consensus with the experienced incubators on here that the humidity should be kept between 40-50%. And then raised for the last 3 days. Several have reported excellent hatch rates with this humidity. Should I really be driving myself crazy over this humidity issue???

 

[Junkmanme]

Perhaps this information from Mississippi State University would be helpful:

http://msucares.com/poultry/reproductions/poultry_pipped.html

-Junkmanme-

 

[Chicky Mama]

It definetly makes a difference.With to low humidity 2 chicks needed my help getting out cuz they were stuck to the membrane.It also can affect their toes,I had to put a shoe on one who's foot curled under because of it. We live in the mountains where it's SUPER dry and hard to maintain a consistent level.My hands look like I'm in the fields all day, I hate it. Some eggs there's nothing you can do.

 

[duckboatprincess]

I haven't added any water to my bator since I've started. My humidity has stayed between 48 and 50% up until yesterday. It rained all day and night yesterday, so my humidity was at 60%. I lockdown today, so I didn't figure it'd hurt anything. I'm running a styrofoam bator, so the humidity in the room really affects the humidity in the bator.

 

[walkswithdog]

Results vary by area - I think in part as pointed out, if you open the incubator in TN or Florida, during a hatch, you don't change much.

You open an incubator at 8000 ft up, and 18 % humidity and you can seriously compromise your levels.

Or in the desert.

That said different sets of eggs can require different humidity, shipped eggs, porous eggs - they might need more because they tend to have lost some valuable water in shipping or injury and bear watching.

I ignore the humidity in my incubator unless it falls beneath 25% from day 1-18. And then bump it to 50ish or 60 and let the hatch take it from there.

Much of the confusion over "perfect" humidity is actually a ventilation issue, I think. They're easy to confuse and without proper ventilation, whether there's too much humidity or too little - the hatching chicks suffocate and people put it down to "humidity" issues.

Bators should be, as much as possible, run with more air, not less. And humidity should never be boosted near a hatch period by CLOSING vents.

We've had many discussions and one good long thread on ventilation vs humidity FREAKING out. What you do to maintain a base humidity, or raise it at hatch varies hugely from area to area. It's easy for some and near impossible for others. I toss in one sponge - voila.

When I built my incubator this time I built it with more air holes, and two fans and simple adjusted the heat source and thermostat to handle the higher turn over. The result was better hatches. That wouldn't be the case in a desert or at altitude because that high a circulation would make the humidity very hard to maintain with the much drier air coming in.

What your air circulation is like, makes a difference to the humidity you have, can get and need. It's not quite the exact same thing as saying different areas need differing humidity IN their incubators. They kind of share the same space in thought/process, and application.

Too much humidity in a contained environment either suffocates or drowns chicks outright. Figuring out which was which is hard. But if you increase ventilation, humidity drops. OR If you decrease humidity, more oxygen is available. So you get people who report varying degrees of success with different humidities, but you almost ALWAYS hear that people get better hatches with a FAN. Because they increase ventilation.

This whole incubation thing isn't actually as straight forward as it looks on paper.

But individual environments - including ventilation and available oxygen, and humidity - has some bearing on what you have to do to get it right.

 

[MichiganGoatGirl]

I'm SOOO glad I found this thread, I have some serious questions! I just finished up trying to hatch out 2 batches of chicken eggs using the dry hatch method posted on this website. Last year I followed the directions to the T and got a very sucessfull hatch, 20 out of 26 eggs. I was thrilled.
This year, the humidity (Michigan) has been high, 62-68% on average according to my hygrometer (this is the room humidity) and the same in the incubator with no water added. My hatches were a miserable failure. The first one, 0 eggs out of 12. The second one, 1 egg out of 20! Both were shipped eggs. I am very disappointed to say the least, I spent all that time, plus quite a bit of $$ on the eggs. The first batch the eggs began to develop a little then quit. The second batch about half the eggs developed to about full size as far as I can tell, and then died toward the end. Each egg had a large dry air sac when I picked them open on day 23. I have a Hovabator 1602n. No fan. Did they suffocate do you think? Too high of humidity??

1. How can I add a fan?
2. Do I need to get a dehumidifier for the room to get the humidity down to 40-50% for days 1-18?
3. What temp for still air and what temp for one with a fan??

Thanks so much for helping! I'm so frustrated I could scream. All that waiting, hovering over the bator, anticipation, etc. for a whole bunch of dead chicks. UUGH!

 

[NateinFL]

That's terrible! Something is definitely wrong with the shipping or with the way you are incubating, I wish I could help but I'm new at this as well, I'm just on a mission to find as much information as possible so I can get the best hatches possible. It seems like everyone has their own opinion on incubating.

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

OK...I have a strong opinion about this after hatching chicks for the past year.

I just got a hovabator 1588 after using my homemade bator for all my previous hatches which were great hatches.

I've had 3 miserable hatches in the hovabator with the humidity at 30% day 1-18 and at 65% day 18 through hatch.

I'm going to up my temps to 101 degrees and not add any water AT ALL days 1-18. My ambient air humidity runs about 50% with the a/c on all the time...I'm in Florida. The bator runs 28-30% with no water added.

I will add water to bring the humidity up to around 65% at the first pip...not necessarily at day 18.

That's what I used to do and had great hatches.

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

Quote:
1. Yes you can add a fan. Use a computer fan and be sure to put a 1/2 inch hole in the styrofoam directly above it so it can pull in fresh air.

2. I would definitely dehumidify the room if you can't get the humidity inside the incubator at least down to 35%

3. I personally like to run the temp at the higher end of the hatching range. I ran my new hovabator at 100 degrees and had 3 miserable hatches. From now on it's back up to at least 101 - 101.5. That is especially important when the humidity is running a bit high.


I have a $62.00 lone silkie chick from my hatch a few days ago

That's just the eggs plus shipping...not including the time and agonizing over the eggs the whole 21 days

Edited to add: Try enlarging the ventilation holes in the bottom of the hovabator. Take an ice pick and ream out the holes as big as you can.