Incubating turkey eggs...

[ZooMomster]

I purchased 10 turkey eggs in hopes of adding some goblets to our little growing farm, and unfortunately it didnt go so well...

I read online to keep the temperature at 99 degrees with humidity between 50-60% and jumping to 70% humidity as they get close to hatching. I got my eggs and immediately put them into the incubator. Humidity and temperature were on point, the incubator was only opened to add water to sustain humidity, but on day 28, not a single egg hatched. So we waited another 2 days just to see and still nothing happened. We took all the eggs out and started opening them to find that 5 of the eggs had fully developed chicks inside, 1 looks to have started but died early on, and the other 4 didn't look to be fertilized. Needless to say I felt awful after seeing that, but we would really like to try again. What did we do wrong?! Any suggestions are very much appreciated!

 

[feedman77]

Was your incubator forced air or still air. That will make a difference on the temp. 99.5 forced air. 102 still air. Temp taken at the top of the eggs.

We're settings verified with secondary thermometers and hydrometers? Sometimes the reading on the incubators can be off by quite a bit.

From a personal incubation stand point I don't let my humidity get above 35 percent. If I get I to 50 during incubation I have a lot of fully formed but dead poults. Drown if they pip into air cell that hasn't lost enough water.

What type of incubator?