Incubation questions

dancechick915

Songster
Sep 24, 2015
92
134
126
Southern California
I’m getting my first eggs by mail (which I’m a bit nervous about but we’ll see) and I have a few questions. I have the janoel 12 incubator and I’m testing it before my silkie eggs get here. Today the temperature climbed higher than I had it set and then dropped and kept getting lower until going back up and then holding temperature nicely again (I’ve attached a photo). Is this bad? Also the average temperature has been about 99.9 which I think is pretty good... any experts want to weigh in? The humidity spike on the photo is when I decided to test what adding a small amount of water to the bottom would do which made it jump up to about 48.8%. I’ve been reading so much conflicting anectodes on different humidities but I was planning on having it around 30-40%. Are humidity fluctuations bad? Thanks for any advice! I’m so nervous about screwing this up :barnie

C48C3B51-5B28-4702-A922-58C0CF632E88.png
 
:D

I can see what happened. you put in hot water. or water that was warmer than the air inside the incubator. That's why your temp spiked. (100.8 isn't that bad.) and then as your water cooled. I'm guessing you must have forced air with how quickly it went down. your temp dropped too, but it leveled off again with the water in there which is good.

try adding in room temperature water next time.

I'm not sure of your local humidity, or anything about setting silkie eggs, but personally, because the local humidity is so high I run mine for the first 18 days with no added water. right now my incubator is at about 20%Rh inside.

humidity is a tool you can use to change the size of the air cell.
air cell.gif

less humidity means the liquid in the egg will evaporate more quickly. higher humidity will slow down the liquid evaporating. Candling on days 1, 7, 14, and 18. and even marking the size of the aircell will help you decide what you need to do to get them the right size.
 
:D

I can see what happened. you put in hot water. or water that was warmer than the air inside the incubator. That's why your temp spiked. (100.8 isn't that bad.) and then as your water cooled. I'm guessing you must have forced air with how quickly it went down. your temp dropped too, but it leveled off again with the water in there which is good.

try adding in room temperature water next time.

I'm not sure of your local humidity, or anything about setting silkie eggs, but personally, because the local humidity is so high I run mine for the first 18 days with no added water. right now my incubator is at about 20%Rh inside.

humidity is a tool you can use to change the size of the air cell.
View attachment 1437352
less humidity means the liquid in the egg will evaporate more quickly. higher humidity will slow down the liquid evaporating. Candling on days 1, 7, 14, and 18. and even marking the size of the aircell will help you decide what you need to do to get them the right size.

The water was somewhat cold (our sinks always take a few minutes to warm up).
I was away from home and when it dropped. I thought maybe the power went out and then suddenly switched back on when it raised back up but since the thermometer uses our wireless network it would’ve turned off if the power went (so it’s not the powers fault).
I am pretty positive my incubator is forced air.
I live in Southern California so our humidity varies from about 20-80% depending on if it’s day or night. I was thinking about doing no water for the first 18 (it was ranging around 24-35% without any added inside the incubator) but I wanted to test it and see what it would do with a bit of water before the eggs get here (mainly out of curiosity). I do think I want to mark the air cell and go off of that! Thanks for the picture!
When my eggs do get here and if the temperature does drop down again below 99 for about an hour is that going to hurt the eggs?
 
The water was somewhat cold (our sinks always take a few minutes to warm up).
I was away from home and when it dropped. I thought maybe the power went out and then suddenly switched back on when it raised back up but since the thermometer uses our wireless network it would’ve turned off if the power went (so it’s not the powers fault).
I am pretty positive my incubator is forced air.
I live in Southern California so our humidity varies from about 20-80% depending on if it’s day or night. I was thinking about doing no water for the first 18 (it was ranging around 24-35% without any added inside the incubator) but I wanted to test it and see what it would do with a bit of water before the eggs get here (mainly out of curiosity). I do think I want to mark the air cell and go off of that! Thanks for the picture!
When my eggs do get here and if the temperature does drop down again below 99 for about an hour is that going to hurt the eggs?
Nope. Ive had eggs down to 93 when the power did go out. And they were all fine.
 
The thing that controls humidity levels is surface area. You probably spilled some water somewhere you did not mean to and got the inside of the incubator a bit wet. As it evaporated the humidity spiked. Once that excess moisture evaporated (that area dried off) the humidity stabilized.

Adding cold water or at least water cooler than incubation temperature is great. It won't take the incubator long to heat it up. The incubator is very well insulated, if you add hot water it can raise the temperature inside higher than you wish. The way the incubator reduces heat is that the heater does not run for a while so it gradually cools off. With that well-insulated incubator you might get a temperature spike that lasts for a while that can be harmful if you use hot water.

Your incubator is supposed to be a forced air. That means you have a fan inside so the temperature should be the same anywhere you measure it. In a still air you have to be careful where you take the measurement.

Instantaneous humidity is not that important. What is important is that the egg loses a certain amount of moisture throughout the entire incubation process. Through trial and error I've determined that I get the best hatches with an average humidity of 39%, give or take. If mine runs at 50% for a few days I will try to run it at 30% for a few days to average it out. Mother Nature was kind to us. You don't have to be dead on with humidity or moisture loss to get a good hatch you just need to be in the ballpark. But you do need to be in the ballpark, humidity is important.

Those temperatures and temperature swings don't look bad. Again Mother Nature was kind to us. If you are within a degree or so you will get eggs to hatch. Again it is the average that counts. If your average incubation temperature is a bit high the eggs may hatch early, if it is a bit cool they can be late, maybe a couple of days either way.. It takes a while for the inside of the egg to heat up or cool off when the air temperature inside the incubator changes. A temporary spike or cooling off isn't that bad, but you don't want it to stay too hot too long to where the inside of the egg gets hot enough to cook the developing chick. 101 F probably won't kill the chick, 103 F for long enough to heat the inside of the egg will. You want the inside of the egg to be as close to 99.5 F as you reasonably can, but being off a half a degree is not a death sentence. It's actually not bad.

All in all that does not look bad. Good luck with the hatch.
 

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