Long time listener, first time caller

[Robertos87]

Hey guys, been lurking around these forums for a while, soaking in the great information you guys helpfully post. Well, I have been wanting for the longest time to breed Coturnix for meat and eggs, and I decided to take the leap. I got myself an incubator, almost finished building myself a breeding cage, and am about to start building a brooder and a growout cage. I picked up two dozen fertile quail eggs and just put them into the incubator. The idea is to pick out six females from this lot, bring in another male to start breeding. The bator is sitting at 37.7°c and 46% humidity, fingers crossed I get a decent result from my first time. I do have a question, the first of many im sure. How much, and how quickly does the humidity fluctuate? Just worried it might drop too much while im asleep or something. Thanks in advance guys, look forward to getting to know you all.

 

[casportpony]

Hey guys, been lurking around these forums for a while, soaking in the great information you guys helpfully post. Well, I have been wanting for the longest time to breed Coturnix for meat and eggs, and I decided to take the leap. I got myself an incubator, almost finished building myself a breeding cage, and am about to start building a brooder and a growout cage. I picked up two dozen fertile quail eggs and just put them into the incubator. The idea is to pick out six females from this lot, bring in another male to start breeding. The bator is sitting at 37.7°c and 46% humidity, fingers crossed I get a decent result from my first time. I do have a question, the first of many im sure. How much, and how quickly does the humidity fluctuate? Just worried it might drop too much while im asleep or something. Thanks in advance guys, look forward to getting to know you all.

Welcome to BYC! Maybe @AmyLynn2374 can help with your question.

-Kathy

 

[AmyLynn2374]

I have not yet done quail, but as far as humidity concerns. Humidity no matter what the bird is most important as an average. Unlike temps a drop or spike in humidity is not going to do damage. We control humidity to control the loss of moisture from an egg over the duration of the incubation. Higher the humidity the less an egg will loose weight/moisture wise. Lower humidity will cause an egg to loose more and faster. If 45% humidity works for you and it stays around 45% all day and half way into the night and you wake to find it at 30% or 50% it's not an emergency situation. You just make the adjustments you need to make to even it back out to where you need it. It's the weight loss of the egg is important and as long as the egg is loosing the right amount of moisture/weight and the air cells are growing at the right speed, humdiityis just a number. Now, I don't know if there are any quail charts out there to show where air cell size should be at the main times, but 11%-13% is the given amount an [chicken] egg should loose for weight over the course of the incubation. I believe that is universal for all eggs, but you may want to double check that.

And

 

[Lynn Manes]

Hey guys, been lurking around these forums for a while, soaking in the great information you guys helpfully post. Well, I have been wanting for the longest time to breed Coturnix for meat and eggs, and I decided to take the leap. I got myself an incubator, almost finished building myself a breeding cage, and am about to start building a brooder and a growout cage. I picked up two dozen fertile quail eggs and just put them into the incubator. The idea is to pick out six females from this lot, bring in another male to start breeding. The bator is sitting at 37.7°c and 46% humidity, fingers crossed I get a decent result from my first time. I do have a question, the first of many im sure. How much, and how quickly does the humidity fluctuate? Just worried it might drop too much while im asleep or something. Thanks in advance guys, look forward to getting to know you all.

We have done 2 quail incubations with a good hatch rate. We keep ours at 50% humidity & check it about 3 times a day. And we're going to be saving eggs again for incubating for the BYC Halloween Hatch Off. Good luck.