Low humidity, day 7??

[JChicken77]

Hi there,
I have nine chicken eggs in my incubator right now and today is day 7. I was very busy today and only got to check on the eggs in the morning. Tonight when I went and checked on them the humidity was down to 25%!

Could that drop in humidity at this point be very bad for the eggs?? Or maybe even kill the embryos? I'm worried

 

[n8ivetxn]

Oh no, they're fine! Some of us are practicing a method called "dry hatching." For days 1 - 17, the humidity is kept between 20 - 35% and then from days 18 thru hatch, we up the humidity 65 - 75%.

Personally, I've been keeping my humidity between 27 - 35%. It goes up and down depending on the house temp and time of day, etc....

Keep us posted!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

I agree that your eggs will be fine. Variations in humidity are fine as long as you have a good average over the entire incubation period and your air cells grow adequately. I too shoot for 35% during incubation which works well for my environment and incubator.

Good luck with your eggs and I hope you have a great hatch

 

[n8ivetxn]

Variations in humidity are fine as long as you have a good average over the entire incubation period and your air cells grow adequately.

Well said!

I too shoot for 35% during incubation which works well for my environment and incubator.

It's good to know this method works well for others, in 5 days I go into lock-down on my first ever incubation. And, your climate is a lot like mine

.......BTW, I love your Polish birds, I am soo tempted to get me some of those!

 

[Suprise-Chicks]

Don't stress they should be OK, the humidity is important and more important in the last 3 days before hatching.

Just try and keep a eye on the incubator and keep it around 50%. In the last 3 days around 70%.

If by chance the air cell is large I have read you can slow it down by having a higher humidity.

I'm current trying this as I'm at day 20 and when I candled at day 18 before lock down I felt the air cell was to big.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Hi there,
I have nine chicken eggs in my incubator right now and today is day 7. I was very busy today and only got to check on the eggs in the morning. Tonight when I went and checked on them the humidity was down to 25%!

Could that drop in humidity at this point be very bad for the eggs?? Or maybe even kill the embryos? I'm worried

Oh no, they're fine! Some of us are practicing a method called "dry hatching." For days 1 - 17, the humidity is kept between 20 - 35% and then from days 18 thru hatch, we up the humidity 65 - 75%.

Personally, I've been keeping my humidity between 27 - 35%. It goes up and down depending on the house temp and time of day, etc....

Keep us posted!

xs 2

I agree that your eggs will be fine. Variations in humidity are fine as long as you have a good average over the entire incubation period and your air cells grow adequately. I too shoot for 35% during incubation which works well for my environment and incubator.

Good luck with your eggs and I hope you have a great hatch

xs 2 Yorkshire!!!!

Humidity is important overall for the whole incubation as an average. While spikes and drops will have no immediate effect on the embryos, humidity too high over the average of the incubation will not allow the egg to loose sufficient moisture and cause chicks to drown at hatch and running too dry over the incubation can cause too much moisture loss with possibilities of shrink wrapping your chicks.

Many of us choose a low humidity incubation for the first 17 days, (often refered to as dry) before highering the humidity for hatch. Few people I know can successfully hatch standard eggs running much about 45% without having many DIS chicks at hatch time. Especially the styro bators seem to do better with the low humidity. I NEVER recommed anyone to start above 40% humidity and I always recommend, especially newbies that haven't had a chance to see what works for them, to monitor your air cells for growth. This will allow you to know at what level your humidty is working and if and when you need to adjust.

I run dry when I can and try to hold it around 30% I raise 75+ for hatch because I am a hands on hatcher.

If you'd like to see more about low humidity incubation and monitor air cells, you can check it out here: http://letsraisechickens.weebly.com...anuals-understanding-and-controlling-humidity

ETA: I found when I did the much smaller silkie eggs, that I needed to adjust my humidity to 45% as an average to control moisture loss.

 

[JChicken77]

Thanks for the help everyone, I'm not so worried now