Hello Everyone,
I have been trying to find the perfect breed for us to raise as layers, meat birds and breeding stock and decided upon the Light Sussex. Currently we have Gold Comet chickens and will be setting some GC eggs and mail order Light Sussex eggs from the Greenfire Farms stock. Although, I have incubated eggs four times before this; is the first time I will be using mail order L.S eggs because L.S poults are hard to come by. I was wondering if there is anything I should look for or do before setting the L.S eggs when they arrive this Saturday?
As mentioned, I have incubated eggs before once this year and three times last year. I have never had a great hatch rate so far, which is why my parents think I am crazy for using expensive mail order eggs. My last hatch included 24 eggs and I incubated using the dry incubation method. Interestingly almost all of the eggs appeared to be fertile,but in by the time the incubation was done and through only 10 eggs hatched. The average humidity in the incubator was around 10-13% and the temperature ranged between 99.5 to 102.9 at the highest. I was wondering if any of you all might know why my hatch rates have been so poor? This last hatch was the first time I used the dry incubation method and I did get my best hatch out of that batch but it still wasn't great. Do you think my humidity was to low (it stayed around 30% when the chicks hatched), my temperature varied to much or maybe something else?
Thank you so much for your help and crossing my fingers that this will be my best hatch yet!
I have been trying to find the perfect breed for us to raise as layers, meat birds and breeding stock and decided upon the Light Sussex. Currently we have Gold Comet chickens and will be setting some GC eggs and mail order Light Sussex eggs from the Greenfire Farms stock. Although, I have incubated eggs four times before this; is the first time I will be using mail order L.S eggs because L.S poults are hard to come by. I was wondering if there is anything I should look for or do before setting the L.S eggs when they arrive this Saturday?
As mentioned, I have incubated eggs before once this year and three times last year. I have never had a great hatch rate so far, which is why my parents think I am crazy for using expensive mail order eggs. My last hatch included 24 eggs and I incubated using the dry incubation method. Interestingly almost all of the eggs appeared to be fertile,but in by the time the incubation was done and through only 10 eggs hatched. The average humidity in the incubator was around 10-13% and the temperature ranged between 99.5 to 102.9 at the highest. I was wondering if any of you all might know why my hatch rates have been so poor? This last hatch was the first time I used the dry incubation method and I did get my best hatch out of that batch but it still wasn't great. Do you think my humidity was to low (it stayed around 30% when the chicks hatched), my temperature varied to much or maybe something else?
Thank you so much for your help and crossing my fingers that this will be my best hatch yet!
