Hi Sally
Firstly thank you for all your invaluable advice, you've been a great help.
I'm on my first hatch and made the mistake of setting Silkie (chicken) & khaki campbell (ducks) eggs together. (All at different stages)
I didn't realise at that point how different their humidity needs were, unfortunately when the chicks came time to hatch two drowned (which panicked me) so i helped the final two (in hindsight a bit early) and they didn't make it either.
I've tried to determine what went wrong by looking through your threads and I'm pretty sure the humidity was too high for them as they were swollen and wet.
I've got Khakis due from 1 weeks time and after reading on your thread that too low humidity is less bad than too high humidity I have brought the humidity down from 50-65% to between 30 & 50%
Their air cells range between normal small I'd say.
So my question is, should dropping the humidity so drastically allow the eggs to dry out a little and lose weight in time for hatching? OR could I have caused them worse damage?
I know the humidity needs to go up really high for lockdown on day 25 but I was wondering if 1 week at 30-40% will be time enough to correct any damage I may have done from too high humidity?
When I realised the chicks had died of too much humidity I emptied all the water out and started fresh. Since then I haven't added any water (1/2 days) and yet the humidity keeps climbing up to around 50% (i'm guessing this is water evaporating out of the eggs) I keep opening the bator every few hours to release it which lowers the humidity back down to around 30/40% and within an hour or so it's back up near 50% again.
Should I continue releasing the excess humidity until it stabilises?
So many questions, sorry! 1st timer and I know mistakes are inevitable but I don't want chicks/ducklings to suffer needlessly
Best wishes,
Vicky