incubating problems

[craigHartland]

Hi, I must say how helpful byc has been so far but i'm struggling to find an answer to my problem and I cant understand it.

A couple of months ago I decided to start raising chickens again but this time I wanted to hatch my own and grow them up from chicks, I've looked up all the advice I possibly could on incubation and followed it as perfectly as I could. I keep humidity between 45-55% for the first 18 days and then put it up to 60-70% but i'm roughly getting 1 hatch out of 12 eggs each time the rest have died just before they were ready to hatch. By the way when I bump the humidity up to 60% I put them into a different incubator to hatch. please could someone help me because i'm spending so much money on eggs on ebay and cant wait to see some decent hatch rates because I love to see some baby chicks, hopefully these vorwerks and silkies I have in the bator do better.

 

[bobbi-j]

First of all, I'd suggest you get some inexpensive eggs locally and try hatching them out to make sure it's not the eggs you've been buying, and to work out whatever other kinks are in your hatching project. In the past, have you had eggs shipped to you? If so, how was your hatch rate? Would it be possible for you to just leave the eggs in the same incubator for hatching? I don't know how moving them could hurt, but maybe try leaving them once to see what happens. It's hard to give a good, clear answer to your question as there are so many things that can affect a hatch. I have never had eggs shipped, but there are so many threads on here about getting poor hatch rates from shipped eggs. You might want to read them.

 

[craigHartland]

ok thanks for the help, im going to leave these vorwerks and silkies in the same incubator for hatching this time. I have just read a thread on this website about dry incubating and i think my problem is the humidity because when I open the unhatched eggs they have a lot of water in them so i am going to try keep it lower for these eggs and see what happens. ill let you know if they hatch and how many hatch, the due date is 11th june

 

[craigHartland]

hi, ive candled my eggs a about 5 days before they are meant to hatch and it looks like ive possibly got 2 eggs out of 18 hatching if that. This is extremely frustrating and really need help because ive wasted so much money on eggs

 

[Goblnfvr]

I found where I live that I have the best hatch's with humidity at 30-35% for the first 18 days and then I raise it to 60% for lockdown.I don't go any higher for lock down because once the chicks begin to hatch the humidity will spike upwards as the chicks dry off.
Good luck with you hatch!