Low Humidity in Incubator

[Kelly Klumpp]

i have 23 quail eggs in my incubator, and this is my first time incubating any type of eggs at all. on day 2 of incubation, i had to go to work, and i left my incubator at 55% humidity, counting on the humidity to drop a little throughout the day since its pretty dry around here anyways. when i returned however, the humidity was at 16%! I fixed this quickly, but im not sure if this will have a big impact on the chicks.

should i restart with more quail eggs? what type of impact would this have? are the embryos dead?

 

[Nabiki]

They'll be fine. For coturnix quail, you only want the humidity to be around 30%. I did my first two hatches at 55% and had all kinds of issues with curled toes, and weak chicks. When I listened to people here and lowered the humidity to 30%, I had much better hatch rates, and practically no curled toe chicks.

Humidity fluctuations are far less impactful than temperature fluctuations. Make sure that the temperature stays steady and that you have at least two calibrated thermometers inside.

 

[Kelly Klumpp]

They'll be fine. For coturnix quail, you only want the humidity to be around 30%. I did my first two hatches at 55% and had all kinds of issues with curled toes, and weak chicks. When I listened to people here and lowered the humidity to 30%, I had much better hatch rates, and practically no curled toe chicks.

Humidity fluctuations are far less impactful than temperature fluctuations. Make sure that the temperature stays steady and that you have at least two calibrated thermometers inside.

oh thank you so much, i was so worried! ill be sure to lower the humidity a bit.